Two laboratory instructional approaches, individual project and mass production methods, were compared to determine their relative effectiveness in developing student understanding of industry in industrial arts. It was hypothesized that knowledge of tools, operations, industrial organization, and materials of industry could be taught as effectively in terms of student behavioral change by the mass production instructional approach as by the individual project instructional approach. The experiment involved four teachers and eight classes of grade 8 metalwork students for 15 school days, each day having a 50-minute period of instruction for industrial arts. The Iowa Tests of Basic Skills were used to divide students into high, middle and low achievement groups. Pretest scores on each criterion measure were used as the covariance on two factor analyses of covariance performed with project data. Within each instructional approach some peculiarity in the pattern of scores and the criterion measures were observed; however, no significant differences were found between the two instructional approaches. This Ph.D. dissertation was submitted to the University of Missouri. (CH)