THE INTERACTIVE EFFECTS OF STUDENT ABILITY, LEARNING STYLE, AND SEQUENCING OF CALCULUS INSTRUCTION ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND PREFERENCE

This study compared the structural nature of learning outcomes for students with different ability and different learning styles who received different instructional sequencing and tested the predictions of the assimilation-to-schema model.;Generalized regression analyses were performed on measures of abstract retention, concrete retention, transfer performance, and student preference for instructional sequence. The main effect of instructional sequence and the interaction effect of sequence by ability were found not to be significant for either abstract or concrete retention performance. The main effect of sequence and the interaction effect of sequence by LSI on transfer performance or student preference for sequence were also found not to be significant. A significant interaction ((alpha) = .01) was identified between sequence and ability on transfer performance. The regression lines indicated that high ability students performed better under the sequence which presented the concrete before the abstract.;This result was consistent with other research which has found similar significant interactions between ability and sequence on transfer performance, but no such interaction on retention performance. Furthermore, it reinforced the assimilation-to-schema prediction that the learner must possess the schemata and ability to assimilate the information if instruction is to be "meaningful".;The lack of significant interactive effects with the learning style measure were not taken as impressive negative evidence against such effects due to the study's low N. Further research should investigate other aptitude measures and higher order interactions.;One instructional sequence presented the concept of a derivative through concrete examples and then through abstract limit concepts; the other sequence reversed this order of presentation. The ability measure was on material highly relevant and prerequisite to the instructional treatment. David A. Kolb's (1976) Learning Style Inventory (LSI) was used to measure student learning style on an abstract/concrete dimension. The subjects were students enrolled in the first quarter of a three quarter freshman calculus sequence at North Seattle Community College in Seattle, Washington, winter quarter 1984, (N = 50).