The effectiveness of a unit on community study in changing attitudes towards the community and social studies

Barry, Rosemary Catherine (1976) The effectiveness of a unit on community study in changing attitudes towards the community and social studies. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

This internship consisted of two tasks. One was to develop a unit that would serve as a guide to teachers and students in carrying out studies of their community. The unit consists of 17 lesson plans that would take approximately one semester to complete. The unit aimed at having the students ask questions and seek out their own information on the community. The second task was to field test this unit to determine its validity and to see whether studying this unit would influence the students' attitudes towards their community and towards Social Studies in general. -- An attitude scale, the Semantic Differential, was used as a pre- and posttest to determine the students' attitudes prior to the unit and again when the unit was completed. The results of the study indicate that the unit did result in more positive attitudes towards the concepts tested, i.e., My Neighbourhood, My School, My Social Studies Class, My Community, Learning About My Community, and People in My Community. These results were corroborated by the results of student questionnaire which were highly favourable. Eighty-four per cent of the students responded that they preferred this type of study to their regular work, and 98 per cent responded that they felt this type of study was important.

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