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The effects of a focused Sustained Silent Reading program on learning in biology and attitudes toward biology and reading
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a focused Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) program on high school biology students' attitudes toward reading and science in school and knowledge of biology. The focused SSR time was a period of ten minutes at the beginning of alternate class days when students were allowed to read self selected material that had a strong biological base. The experimental design of this research was quasi-experimental, pretest posttest with non equivalent control groups. The experimental group (n = 165) showed significantly more improvement on the Estes Inventory of Attitude toward Reading (Estes, 1975), F(1,244) = 29.484, p $<$.001, and the Attitude toward Science in School Assessment (Germann, 1988), F(1,244) = 26.51, p $<$.001, than the control group (n = 85). There were no significant differences between control and experimental groups in grades earned or score improvement on the NABT/NSTA High School Biology Exam (NABT, 1990). There were significant interactions, p $<$.10, between gender and SSR for score changes on Attitude toward Reading, Attitude toward Science in School, and High School Biology Exam. Girls in the experimental group showed relatively greater gains than boys on all three instruments. Significant interactions were observed between grade earned, score change and SSR for students' attitudes toward reading and science in school. Students' earning B's, C's, D's and F's in treatment classes showed significantly greater score gain, p $<$.02 than students earning the same grades in control classes. Students' in treatment classes earning B's and F's showed significantly greater score gains in attitude toward science in school than students in control classes. These results support the hypothesis that SSR has application in biology classrooms as a tool to improve attitudes toward reading and science in school.
Subject Area
Science education|Literacy|Reading instruction
Recommended Citation
Saunders, Gerald Wayne, "The effects of a focused Sustained Silent Reading program on learning in biology and attitudes toward biology and reading" (1991). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9200152.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9200152