The Effects of Two Types of Advance Organizer Presentation on Preschool Children's Classification, Relations, and Transfer Task Performance

This thesis reports a study of the effects of two types of advance organizer instruction, expository (EO) and guided self-discovery (GSDO), in teaching hierarchical classification or relations to preschool children. In the study, four experimental and one control group received three 25 minute instructional sessions. Using the same materials, experimental groups received either EO or GSDO instruction in classification or relations. Straightforward statements were made in EO instruction, and guiding questions were used in the GSDO lessons. In the control group, teachers used the same materials without the EO or GSDO teaching methods. Eight pre and posttests measured spontaneous classification, class inclusion, additive seriation, and one-to-one correspondence. Transfer tasks, administered six weeks after training, consisted of cross classification and cross seriation in a 3 x 3 matrix, spontaneous classification and one-to-one correspondence problem solving tasks, and conservation of area and number. Results indicated that both organizer groups outperformed the control group, and performance by EO groups was significantly superior to GSDO groups. The effectiveness of the EO method of instruction with preschool children was evidenced by the duration of training effects up to 10 weeks, and transfer task performance at 14 weeks after instruction. (Author/SB)