A comparison of the effect of teacher-directed versus student-directed study skills methods on achievement of students of low socioeconomic level in ninth grade Social Studies

This study examined the effect of teacher-directed and student- directed study skills methods on achievement of low socioeconomic level students in ninth grade social studies. Competent and non-competent readers were assigned to one of five treatment groups. Two groups used student-directed methods of Sentence Generation or SQ3R; two used teacher-directed methods of S4R or Guided Reading Procedure; and a control group had no study skills instruction. Effectiveness of the various methods was measured with multiple choice (fact recognition) tests and with main idea recall tests administered at the ends of individual chapters and at the end of a unit covering four chapters. The eleven teachers who participated were assigned to methods which they maintained throughout the study. All teachers were asked to spend the same amount of time on each chapter so that students in each treatment group would receive equal exposure to the various methods. [...]