University of South Alabama
College of Education
Instructional Design & Development
Program
ABSTRACTS
An investigation of Rogerian argumentation and cooperative learning
and their relation to individual epistemology, attitude and writing performance
(Carl Rogers)
Nowlin, Barry R.
2001
Chair: Dempsey, John V.
The purpose of the study was to determine if the introduction of Rogerian
argumentation based on Carl Rogers' psychological principles and cooperative
learning would affect students' writing performance and attitudes toward
writing. Participants included the members of four, intact freshman composition
classes. All students received the same instruction for the first seven
weeks of the semester which focused on traditional, classical argumentative
writing. During the following eight weeks each of the four groups received
a different treatment. Two groups continued to write classical arguments,
but one of these two groups wrote within a cooperative environment. The
other two groups wrote Rogerian arguments, but one of these Rogerian groups
wrote their arguments in a cooperative environment. Writing performance
was assessed using holistic scoring methods. Prewriting argumentative essays
were statistically compared to postwriting argumentative essays to determine
variance. Also, students completed a WASS attitude questionnaire
before and after the treatment. The results of the data indicate the classical
group demonstrated a better performance than the Rogerian group while all
other groups remained about the same. No distinctions were determined among
student attitudes toward writing. Also, student epistemological assumptions
were tested to determine if correlations existed between their epistemological
maturity, their writing performance and their attitudes. No positive correlations
were found to exist. Although further quantitative studies need to be conducted,
the data suggest that the quality of student writing may significantly
increase when students write traditional, classical arguments as opposed
to writing Rogerian arguments. Furthermore, although a considerable number
of studies in the literature indicate that cooperative learning enhances
student performance, this study failed to confirm that cooperative learning
improves student performance in the context of argumentative writing.
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