Date of Award
2003
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Programs for Higher Education
Advisor
Karen Kimball
Committee Member
Lucille Beisner
Committee Member
Barbara Packer
Committee Member
Claudia Santin
Keywords
Bracken Basic Concept Scale, John F. Kennedy Elementary School, academic achievement, concept age gain, concept development, control groups, early childhood education, educational technology, instructional technology, kindergarten, learning outcomes, mean scores, posttest, pretest, randomized assignment, statistical analysis, student achievement, traditional classrooms, treatment groups
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine whether kindergarten students in instructional technology classrooms have a greater concept age gain than students in traditional kindergarten classrooms at John F. Kennedy Elementary School. The 4 kindergarten classrooms to which students were randomly assigned are the subjects of this study. The 2 instructional technology kindergarten classrooms incorporated three computers into the required centers to be completed daily by each student. The 2 traditional kindergarten classroom used the same daily center plans; however, the 3 computers in each of these classrooms were used for free exploration and play after the other centers were completed.
Both groups, the treatment (computer) and the control (traditional), were given the Bracken® Basic Concept Scale test as the pretest and then 23 weeks later as the posttest. The differences in the pretest and posttest scores of the instructional technology kindergarten classrooms were compared to the differences in the pretest scores of the traditional kindergarten classrooms. The statistical analysis of this project focused on the mean scores of the 4 groups.
In analyzing the data for this project, there was a statistically significant difference between the gain scores of the control groups and the gain scores of the tm groups. The results indicated the kindergarten students involved in daily structured computer activities had a more significant increase in concept age gains than those kindergarten students in the traditional setting.