AN EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTS OF PAIRED LEARNING IN A MATHEMATICS COMPUTER-ASSISTED - INSTRUCTION PROGRAM (COOPERATIVE, TEAM, ATTITUDES)

Statement of the Problem. The problem for this study was to determine what effect paired learning had on achievement and attitudes towards mathematics in a computer-assisted-instruction (CAI) program. The three treatment groups used were (1) subjects who worked in pairs for CAI, (2) subjects who worked alone on CAI, and (3) subjects who received only the regular mathematics curriculum.;Procedures. The sample for this study included 275 third and fourth grade subjects enrolled at Pioneer School during the fall of 1984. Two parallel forms of the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS) were used to measure mathematics achievement. The Sandman Mathematics Attitude Inventory was administered as a pre- and post-test to examine changes in attitudes toward mathematics.;The instructional treatments lasted for a period of fifteen weeks with each classroom in Treatments P and S receiving CAI practice for an average of 10 minutes per day. The subjects not receiving CAI were given equal amounts of practice time with skills practice worksheets.;The CTBS and Sandman gain scores were analyzed with multiple analysis of variance procedures for (1) number of correct responses (NC) and (2) grade equivalent (GE) scores.;The purpose of this study was to answer the following questions: (1) Does CAI in either the paired or single user format significantly improve mathematics achievement over traditional instruction? (2) How do different numbers of simultaneous computer users affect mathematics achievement and attitudes toward mathematics? (3) What are the effects of different numbers of simultaneous computer users within the subsets of boys or girls, or low, middle or high mathematics ability students?;Findings. The CTBS GE gain scores for the paired learners were significantly higher than control learners, but NC scores only approached significant differences. Gain scores for single learners on the CTBS were not significantly higher than the control learners.;For the CTBS gain scores, there were no significant differences between paired and single learners as a whole or for any of the subsets.;For the Sandman attitude gain scores, paired learners were significantly less positive toward Motivation in Mathematics than single learners. For the high ability subset, paired learners were significantly less positive than single learners for Anxiety Toward Mathematics and Motivation in Mathematics.