During the past two decades, there have been several highly visible developments in education, including behavioral objectives, criterion-referenced test interpretations, the mastery model in instruction, performance-based instructional programs, competency testing, and accountability. This paper is an attempt to weave these various developments…

Over a three-year period every school system in Maryland received State Department of Education support in putting into practice research on effective teaching, using strategies and processes from the research on effective staff development and planned change. This paper summarizes some of the findings of an intensive study of this program, School…

This study investigated the cognitive and affective student learning outcomes of 16 semesters of a mastery learning approach in teaching high school Business and Distributive Education classes. The class handout describing mastery learning, teacher and student responsibilities, examinations, grading procedures, 5-day unit activities schedule,…

The second volume of papers commissioned by Foundations, a project designed to examine the career development needs of students entering the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, this document contains papers that deal with the instructional components of learning. An introduction presents a conceptual framework for the Foundations project,…

The purpose of this teaching unit is to improve the reading skills of fifth grade students, particularly reading comprehension, by increasing their knowledge about how language works. The three sections of the unit introduce the students to the concepts of context clues and paraphrasing (words, sentences, paragraphs, and stories) and give the…

This paper discusses the teaching approaches used in a basic composition course designed for educationally disadvantaged students. The course integrates three approaches: mastery teaching and learning; James Moffett's student-centered naturalistic curriculum; and Ken Macrorie's Third Way, which combines freedom and discipline in a writing…

In the first part of the paper, some realistic expectations about schools and curriculum development, the conditions which preclude applying the standards of basic research to evaluate a program of instruction in large school systems, and some new research paradigms which have emerged from practice are defined. In the second part, an effort is…

The possible difference in the performance on a mid-term and final exam between students taking a quasi-individualized mastery method of instruction and students having traditional lecture-discussion instruction was studied. A second issue examined was the difference between the proportion of students expressing a preference for one method of…

This study attempted to establish the relationship of cognitive aptitudes and styles to measures of general and more subtle academic achievement. It was expected that the associations of aptitudes and styles to general measures of achievement would converge to form similar correlational patterns; associations of aptitudes to more subtle measures…

A total of 132 volunteer 10th and 11th grade students participated in an experiment to investigate two variables of computer-based adaptive instructional strategies for concept learning. The first variable tested the hypothesis that selection of number of examples according to on-task information is more efficient than selection according to…

Mastery learning is a group-based, teacher-paced instructional strategy. Because it is also committed to criterion-referenced evaluation and to a strong emphasis on feedback and correctives throughout the learning experience, it is often confused with competency-based education, individualized instruction, and related innovations. Mastery learning…

Designed as an introduction to a symposium on the appropriateness of mastery learning as a technique of social studies instruction, this paper reviews research on the variables related to mastery learning in order to provide a basis for systematic symposium discussion. Brief research reviews are included on the following variables: materials,…

The objective of this practicum was to apply mastery learning principles in the development of a computer-based instruction lesson on "Divisibility Rules," which was designed for students preparing for the General Education Development (GED) examination. This practicum sought to demonstrate that computer-based instruction which follows…

This paper examines student characteristics associated with success in a mastery learning strategy by: (1) continually assessing over terms the entry and exit skills of the students enrolled and (2) constructing and validating a scale for measurement in the affective domain. The mastery learning theory itself was proposed by Bloom (1968) as a…

Large classroom population in Korean schools has necessitated the development of an educational model which (1) is effective with a large heterogeneous group of students; (2) does not require an overload on classroom teachers; (3) does not presuppose massive teacher retraining; and (4) is adaptable to a wide range of existing school situations. An…