Date of Award

1-1-1983

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Teaching & Learning

Abstract

Purpose. The purpose of the study is (a) to determine the conceptual orientations and reasoning levels of certain students who are enrolled at the University of North Dakota (UND) for the fall semester of the 1982-1983 school year; (b) to determine interrelationships between certain students' and their professors' conceptual orientations and reasoning levels; and (c) to determine what relationships exist among conceptual orientations and reasoning levels of certain students and their professors and students' evaluations of their learning performance and their professors' teaching effectiveness.Procedure. The research population for this study was comprised of 355 UND students and their 20 professors during the 1982-1983 school year. The subjects in this study were selected to be representative of the total UND student and professor population. All of the subjects (students and professors) participating in the study received the following questionnaire and battery of tests in August and September, 1982: (a) Demographic Information Questionnaire, (b) Conceptual Systems Test (CST), (c) Concrete-Operational Reasoning Test (CORT), and (d) Logical Reasoning Test (LRT). Other sources of data used in the study were comprised of the following: (a) voluntary completion of the 41-item Teacher and Self-Evaluation Form by students during November, 1982, and (b) students' American College Test (ACT) scores. The statistical procedures utilized in the analysis of the data consisted of: (a) two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and (b) canonical analysis. The .05, .01, and the .001 levels were used for evaluating the significance of the results.Conclusions. (1) The Interaction Effect described by Cronbach (1957), i.e., when learners' and teachers' conceptual orientations are matched, instruction will be viewed more favorably by the learners, was not maintained in this study. (2) Anomie was the only subtest of the CST that was related significantly with the CORT. Anomie showed r = -.137 (p < .01). (3) Four of the CST subtests correlated significantly with LRT scores. These subtests included: Need to Help People, Anomie, Need for Structure Order, and Divine Fate Control. (4) Middle and high abstract professors were uniformly rated higher by students on 37 items on the teacher evaluation portion of the Teacher and Self-Evaluation Form than low abstract professors.

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