Doctoral Dissertations
Date of Award
12-1990
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Major
Educational Administration and Supervision
Major Professor
George W. Harris
Committee Members
Norma Mertz, Michael Betz, Charles Chance
Abstract
The primary purpose of this investigation was to examine the relationship of matches and mismatches between selected learning style characteristics of pupils and teachers in relation to student achievement in reading comprehension. The characteristics under investigation were perceptual preferences for tactual and kinesthetic stimuli. The study also examined the reading comprehension achievement between boys and girls, as well as reading comprehension achievement among grade levels. The relationship between perceptual preference and gender was also investigated. An additional purpose of the study was to determine if The Reading Styles Inventory and by The Gregorc Style Delineator had any elements in common. Student data were collected from 120 subjects in grades two, three, four, and five from existing school records that included reading comprehension scores from the 1990 spring administration of The Stanford Achievement Test and reading style profiles from the fall 1989 administration of The Reading Styles Inventory. Both instruments were administered to students as part of their remedial reading program at Alcoa Elementary School during the 1989-90 school year. Twenty-two state certified and state supported teachers were administered The Reading Styles Inventory to identify perceptual preferences. They also completed The Gregorc Style Delineator to determine their dominant style of processing and ordering information. No significant difference was found in the mean reading comprehension scores of those students whose perceptual preferences matched those of their teachers' perceptual preferences. A significant difference was found in the mean reading comprehension scores of boys and girls with girls scoring higher. No significant difference was found among the reading comprehension scores of students in grades two, three, four and five when grade level comparisons were made. No significant relationship between mean achievement scores among grade levels was found. Also, there was no significant relationship found between perceptual preference and gender of the respondents. Carbo's Reading Styles Inventory and Gregorc's Style Delineator instruments were found to have no elements in common.
Recommended Citation
Murphy, Jacquelyn Osborne, "An exploratory study to examine the relationship between student and teacher perceptual preference in relation to student achievement in reading in grades two, three, four, and five of the Alcoa Public School District. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 1990.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/11466