The Effect of Quality of Instruction on Higher and Lower Mental Processes and on the Prediction of Summative Achievement

The purpose of this research was to determine the extent to which lower and higher processes of cognitive outcomes of learning are affected by the instructional conditions provided to students. The research also attempted to examine the power of predictability of final outcomes by prior cognitive entry behavior under different qualities of instructional conditions. Two studies were conducted in two different content areas and two grade levels. Three different group instructional conditions were applied: (a) enhanced cues, participation, reinforcement, and feedback-corrective procedure (CPR + FB/C), (b) conventional instruction, and (c) mastery learning (ML). The results indicate that under CPR ² FB/C conditions most of the students (69%) reached mastery criterion as compared to 57% and 17% in the ML and conventional groups, respectively. The main differences occurred particularly in the higher mental processes rather than in the lower mental processes. The relation between prior and final achievement was found to be very low under the CPR + FB/C instruction and under ML, and high under conventional instruction.