End-of-course and long-term retention outcomes for mastery and nonmastery learning paradigms

Abstract

Using both end‐of‐course achievement outcomes and long‐term cognitive retention as criteria, the present study provides comparative data on the effectiveness of a mastery and nonmastery approach to instruction. Differential effects across taxonomic levels were assessed for both criteria. The results indicated that mastery students performed significantly higher than non‐mastery students for end‐of‐course outcomes at the highest taxonomic level and equally well for knowledge, comprehension, and application level outcomes. Retention differences were found for knowledge level outcomes only, with mastery students demonstrating significantly greater retention performance. The feasibility and desirability of implementing a learning for mastery paradigm in a single course at the college level are discussed relative to the magnitude of the present results.

Knowledge Taught in School: What Is Remembered?

“…This can be done in several ways. One is to give an end-of-term exam and then to later readminister it or questions selected from it (Glasnapp, Poggio, & Ory, 1978;Halpin & Halpin, 1982). To avoid possible testing effects, some researchers create a retention test covering the same material but with different questions (Breland & Smith, 1974;Robin & Graham, 1974;Runquist, 1983;Semb, Ellis, & Araujo, 1993).…”

“…However, because at least some students will have some prior knowledge of the content, the relative loss scores reflect loss of what was learned in the course minus some amount of prior knowledge. Given the formula we use for calculating relative loss, this means that, as the amount of prior knowledge increases, so does the amount of relative loss, assuming that the contribution of prior knowledge to the test scores remains constant throughout the measure- Glasnapp et al (1978) Gray (1987) Greene (1931) Haemmerlie ( ment period. (This may not be a valid assumption given the potential for prior knowledge to interact with knowledge taught in school.)…”

“…They found that PSI produced better retention of basic material than traditional lecture but that retention of obscure concepts was not affected by the method of instruction. Glasnapp, Poggio, and Ory (1978) used Bloom's taxonomy to categorize items and found a decline in retention for knowledge items but not for comprehension items. Also, application items in their study showed a steeper rate of decline than knowledge items.…”

“…Also, application items in their study showed a steeper rate of decline than knowledge items. Glasnapp et al (1978) did not statistically test or report these differences; we derived them from treatment means presented in tables in their article. As reported earlier, Conway, Cohen, and Stanhope (1991) found that both recall and recognition memory for names declined more rapidly than memory for concepts.…”

Relationship of Time and Learning Retention

“…Semb and Ellis (1994) argue that there are two dimensions of the retention interval that can affect retention-length, and what occurred during the interval. With regards to the length of the interval, there are consistent findings that the amount retained declines in a non-linear manner (Bahrick, 1984;Bahrick and Hall, 1991;Glasnapp, Poggio & Ory, 1978). Farr (1987) suggests that the degree of original learning is the most important variable to long-term retention.…”