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Educational Psychologist
ISSN: 0046-1520 (Print) 1532-6985 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hedp20
Antagonism Between Achievement and Enjoyment
in ATI Studies
Richard E. Clark
To cite this article: Richard E. Clark (1982) Antagonism Between Achievement and Enjoyment
in ATI Studies, Educational Psychologist, 17:2, 92-101, DOI: 10.1080/00461528209529247
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00461528209529247
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Educational Psychologist
1982,
Vol. 17, No. 2, 92—101
Antagonism Between Achievement
and Enjoyment in ATI Studies
Richard E. Clark
University of Southern California
There is evidence that negative correlations between student achievement
and their enjoyment of instructional methods exist under certain cir-
cumstances. In aptitude-treatment interaction (ATI) studies where two or
more methods are allowed to interact with student aptitudes to predict en-
joyment and achievement, it appears that students often report enjoying
the method from which they learn the least. Selected ATI studies are
reviewed, and an explanation is suggested which may account for the
negative correlations between achievement and enjoyment in instructional
settings. It appears that students make inaccurate judgments about the
amount of effort they will have to expend to achieve maximum learning
outcomes. Low ability students typically report liking more permissive in-
structional methods, apparently because they allow them to maintain a
"low profile" so that their failures are not as visible. However, in order to
experience maximum achievement low ability students require less per-
missive methods which lower the information processing load on them.
High ability students like more structured methods which they believe will
make their efforts more efficient when these lower load methods seem
often to interfere with their learning. High ability students seem to learn
more from more permissive approaches which allow them to bring their
own considerable skills to bear on learning tasks.
Achievement and enjoyment are occasional-
ly employed as companion outcome measures
in instructional research and evaluation. One
of the implicit assumptions underlying this
strategy is that both outcomes are desirable
and are presumed to support future attitudes
towards instruction. Where contrasting
treatments do not yield differences in achieve-
ment, instructional evaluators sometimes allow
enjoyment differences to dictate the selection
of methods. And yet, there have been few at-
tempts to examine the effect of the interaction
between student aptitudes and instructional
methods on both achievement and the enjoy-
ment of instruction.
The purpose of this discussion is to:
(a) Review breifly selected aptitude-treat-
ment interaction (ATI) studies where both
An earlier version of this article was presented at the
meeting of the American Educational Research Associa-
tion, Los Angeles, 1981. The author wishes to thank
Dennis Hocevar, Gavriel Salomon and Richard Snow for
suggestions as this manuscript developed, without making
them responsible for the result.
The address of Richard E. Clark is: Department of
Educational Psychology and Technology, School of Educa-
tion, University of Southern California, P.O. Box 77963,
Los Angeles, California 90007.
achievement and enjoyment were measured as
outcomes; (b) Attempt to determine the
nature of the correlation between the two types
of outcomes for students who receive instruc-
tional treatments which differ in the amount
of information processing required; and, (c)
Suggest tentative hypotheses about the reason
for inverse or antagonistic relationships be-
tween these outcomes for students with dif-
ferent aptitudes and instructional methods
which apparently differ in information proc-
essing load.
In general, there is evidence that students
report enjoying instructional methods from
which they learn more (e.g., Perry, Abrami, &
Levanthal, 1979). However, Kulik and
McKeachie (1975) and Doyle (1975) review a
number of studies which employed both out-
comes and report correlations between enjoy-
ment and achievement which range from
- .80 to .75. This would suggest that students
do not inevitably enjoy the instructional
method which yields greater achievement. In
some studies, reports of positive relationships
between achievement and enjoyment may be
misleading. Morris and Kimbrell, (1972) for
example, reported a positive correlation be-
tween the two outcomes for a Keller-type
Copyright 1982 by Division 15 of the American Psychological Association, Inc.
92
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ACHIEVEMENT AND ENJOYMENT93
mastery approach to an introductory
psychology course. Students appeared to both
achieve more and report more positive regard
for the Keller method than a conventional ap-
proach. However, closer inspection of their
data suggests that if the prior knowledge of the
students had been taken into account the
results might have changed. Higher ability
students tended to profit from both methods
but liked the mastery approach much better.
Lower aptitude students on the other hand,
seemed to enjoy the conventional method but
to learn more from the mastery approach.
Holloway and Robinson (1979) found a
negative correlation of - .21 between achieve-
ment and enjoyment resulting from different
methods for teaching high school students fac-
tual information about a fictitious indian
tribe.
The interaction between ability and
treatments which varied in amount of structure
was nonsignificant but tended in the same
direction as the Morris and Kimbrell (1972)
data. Alderman (1978) has reported a negative
correlation between these two outcomes in
large scale evaluations of the use of the TICCIT
computer assisted instruction program for
mathematics. Students preferred conventional
lectures but achieved more with TICCIT.
Negative correlations between achievement
and enjoyment seem to extend to situations
where students are allowed to choose between
different instructional methods. Solomon and
Kendall (1976) examined fourth graders'
predispositions to perform well in open or
traditional classrooms. They found evidence
that students were poor judges of the setting in
which they would achieve the most. Ott and
Macklin (1975) found that students who
choose between conventional and audio-
tutorial methods of learning college physics
achieved less than those who were assigned ar-
bitrarily to one method or another, Peterson
and Janicki (1979) have reported a number of
negative relationships between pretest
preference and posttest measures of enjoyment
with the method of choice for high school and
college samples.
At best, the results of studies, where student
choice of method was examined, are mixed.
Yelvington (1968) and Smith (1955) provided
evidence of students achieving less with
methods they reported preferring, but
McLaughlan (1973) found students who liked
unstructured teaching performing better with
the discovery method. Apparently, neither
student choice of method nor arbitrary
assignment seems to yield consistent achieve-
ment and enjoyment outcomes. Cronbach and
Snow (1977), however, have suggested that in-
sights about this antagonism might be gained
from a review of studies which explore the in-
volvement of student aptitudes interacting
with instructional methods.
A Review of Selected ATI Studies
After surveying existing ATI reports which
have examined both outcomes, nine inter-
pretable studies were selected for review. Ap-
proximately 21 studies were rejected because
design or measurement problems made them
uniterpretable. The selected studies
represented a variety of instructional content,
student ages and levels, instructional method
types,
and aptitudes. Following Cronbach and
Snow (1977), a decision was made to addi-
tionally limit the review to studies which
employed aptitude measures which were cor-
related with general ability (e.g., SAT, GRE,
GPA, and IQ scores).
The first task in the review was to find an
adequate categorization scheme for the 21 in-
structional methods employed in the nine ATI
studies. While four studies employed a
method labeled "conventional instruction",
further investigation of the different descrip-
tions indicated that the operational procedures
followed were sometimes different. Even more
important was the chance that these apparent
operational differences between treatments
would have different psychological conse-
quences for subjects in the experiments. A
preferred categorization scheme for methods
would have to differentiate between the many
varieties of labels, nominal characteristics and
operational procedures primarily on the basis
of their presumed psychological contribution
to learning.
Snow (1977) has demonstrated that students
tend to profit differently from methods which
differ in the amount of information processing
they require. Methods which place a higher in-
formation processing burden on students often
result in steeper regression slopes when general
ability is predicting achievement. Methods
which carry more of the information processing
load for students (e.g. are more structured)
yield shallower slopes when plotted with abili-
ty. It has also been suggested (Samuels, 1970;
Kelly, Note 1) that enjoyment of instruction is
related to student perceptions of the amount
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RICHARD E. CLARK
of effort required to learn. It was presumed
that students' notions of the amount of effort
required was related to the amount of informa-
tion processing required by the methods in the
studies surveyed.
In each of the nine studies, instructional
methods were categorized by the author
according to the apparent amount of informa-
tion processing load they placed on the par-
ticipants. Methods were judged to place a
lower load on the subjects if they: (a) were
more highly structured; (b) were more didactic
and directed the student's approach to the
task; (c) modeled necessary skills; (d) were
more redundant; (e) provided synthesis ques-
tions or reviews; (f) were broken into shorter
sequences; (g) provided supervised time on
tasks;
and (h) utilized a number of mathe-
magenic aids such as examples, analogies, at-
tention directing devices, and advance
organizers. Treatments were judged to be
relatively higher in information processing
load if they: (a) provided a more scrambled
presentation; (b) called on, rather than provid-
ed, relevant skills; (c) provided minimum
repetition; (d) were more discovery oriented
and permitted a variety of approaches to the
task; (e) allowed variable time spent on the
task; (f) provided only factual or opinion ques-
tions;
(g) presented information in large
chunks; and (h) provided very few
mathemagenic aids.
There were a number of problems encoun-
tered in classifying all of the instructional
methods in these studies. It is possible that
methods judged higher in load for one study
actually placed less burden on students than
those judged to be lower in load in another
study. It is also the case that the labels applied
to treatments are often misleading. For exam-
ple,
Peterson, Janicki and Swing (1980) report
a study which contrasts a lecture-recitation
with an inquiry method. They expected the in-
quiry method to place a lower burden on
students than the lecture and reported
evidence that the information burden was, in
fact, higher in the lecture method. As im-
plemented in the study, lectures required ex-
tensive notetaking, organizing and memory
for details. In the inquiry method, on the
other hand, students were provided with
detailed instructions on study requirements
and guidelines for fulfilling assignments.
Wherever possible, treatments were classi-
fied after scrutinizing the description of the
operational procedures used to implement
each treatment. However, since there is no
procedure which promises to provide reliable
comparisons of methods between studies, cau-
tion must be exercised in interpreting the
results of the "load" classifications. At best,
these judgments are speculative and often rely
on meager descriptions of the operations which
defined contrasting methods.
Where investigators provided a more con-
ventional treatment and then in a second treat-
ment they duplicated the first but added
elements which attempted to lower the infor-
mation processing load (e.g. Chan, I960;
Maier & Jacobs, 1964), the second treatment
was judged to be lower in load than the first.
In studies which clearly varied the amount of
structure in the method employed (e.g. Maier
&Jacobs, 1966; Peterson, 1977, 1979; Wispe,
1951) the higher structure treatment was judg-
ed to place a lower load on the students
though no comparison between the studies was
possible. Other studies required more detailed
review to classify. Peterson and Janicki (1979)
provided large and small group instruction in
fractions to elementary students. Ordinarily,
small group instruction provides more support
to students and might be assumed to be lower
in processing load. However, small group
students were told to help one another and on-
ly ask a teacher for help if they could not reach
a satisfactory answer or strategy. Small group
students were required to take responsibility
for organization, pacing and employing rele-
vant skills, all of which characterize the higher
load treatments. In the large group, students
were directed to ask the teacher directly if they
had difficulties, and when they asked, they
received specific directions and other aids.
Welch and Walburg (1972) and Morris and
Kimbrell (1972) contrasted "conventional"
methods of teaching with an "innovative" ap-
proach. Morris and Kimbrell used conven-
tional and Keller-plan methods to teach in-
troductory psychology to undergraduates.
After reviewing the operations employed in
the two methods, it was decided to classify the
conventional treatment as higher in load and
the Keller plan approach as lower because
more study aids such as tutoring, structuring,
and synthesis questions were provided to
students in the\ Keller plan. Welch and
Walburg reporteil research which contrasted
conventional lectute and recitation ways to
teach physics with the (then) recently
developed Harvard Project physics. The Har-
vard Project approach focused on smaller steps,
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ACHIEVEMENT AND ENJOYMENT95
more immediate feedback, liberal use of charts
and graphs to illustrate concepts, more direct
and systematic help from teachers and an em-
phasis on the history and processes in physics
rather than the higher load focus on the math-
ematical and verbal content of the discipline.
Snow's (1977) information processing ap-
proach to categori2ing treatments implies generic
hypotheses concerning the relationship between
methods and achievement for students who dif-
fer in general ability. Lower ability students seem
often to profit most from lower load methods
which remove the information processing burden
from them by providing structure and direction.
Higher ability students seem to achieve more
with higher load methods which apparently
allow them to exercise their skills. When lower
ability students receive lower load methods they
often seem unable to provided the many skills re-
quired to learn, and they therefore often fail with
them. Higher ability students sometime fail with
higher load methods because these "predi-
gested" methods provide strategies in, for exam-
ple,
organization and sequencing that may in-
terfere with more familiar and successful
strategies.
While the evidence for this generic ATI be-
tween ability and the load required by different
methods has not been entirely consistent, it was
sufficient for Cronbach and Snow (1977, p.500)
to conclude that: "When one treatment is fully
elaborated, whereas the other leaves much of the
burden of organization and interpretation to the
learner, the regression slope in the former tends
to be less steep. That is, highs profit from the op-
portunity to process the information in their own
way; lows tend to be handicapped. This is not a
universal rule but it encompasses a wide range of
results,".
In seven of the nine studies reviewed (Maier &
Jacobs, 1964, 1966; Morris & Kimbrell, 1972;
Peterson, 1977; Peterson
&
Janicki, 1979; Welch
& Walburg, 1972; Wispe, 1951), low ability
students learned best with methods classified as
lower in load. In the Chan (I960) study there
were no differences between the two methods for
low ability students, and in the Peterson (1979)
study low ability students profited from the (ap-
parently) higher load method.
High ability students achieved best with
higher load treatments in five studies (Chan,
I960;
Morris & Kimbrell, 1972; Peterson, 1977,
1979;
Peterson & Janicki, 1979) and profited
from both treatments equally in two studies
(Welch & Walburg, 1972; Wispe, 1951).In two
studies there is evidence that highs learned more
from the lower load treatment (Maier & Jacobs,
I960,
1964). It may be, however, that the Maier
and Jacobs treatments in both studies (randomly
scrambled programmed instruction frames for
learning Spanish grammar with no outside help)
were too difficult for all of the students. It is
reasonable to conclude, therefore, that the
weight of evidence in these nine studies generally
support the Cronbach and Snow (1977)
hypotheses. High ability students generally
learned more from the higher load treatments,
and lower ability students profited most from the
lower load treatments. Table 1 displays the
categorization employed for the nine studies and
lists tentative conclusions about the relationship
between achievement and enjoyment for each
study.
The Enjoyment of Instructional Methods
In these nine studies there is very little
theoretical discussion of the enjoyment construct.
However, the enjoyment of instruction seems to
be associated with the rewarding nature of ex-
pending less effort for greater results (Lawler &
Porter, 1968; Samuels, 1970; Kelly, Note 1). In a
strategy very similar to those employed by invest-
ment professionals, students like to invest the
least amount of mental effort to achieve the
greatest learning
payoff.
It may also be the case
that students assume they will expend less effort
if they think that the method they are encounter-
ing is "easy", in other words if the perceived
load'of the method is low.
A judgment of lower perceived load may come
from experience with a method. The more
familiar the method the lower the student
perceives the load to be. Verlyne (1964) for ex-
ample, has provided evidence that experiences
which fit existing schémas are regarded as more
pleasurable than less familiar stimuli which are
categorized as "interesting". The enjoyment of
instruction would therefore be expected to be at
its maximum if a student expected the greatest
return for the least effort spent with a method
perceived to have a low information processing
load. Salomon (1981) for example, has provided
evidence that students typically perceive televised
instruction as much easier than written instruc-
tion and his subjects report expending much less
effort watching TV than reading when the con-
tent of the lessons are held constant between the
mediums. Television viewing is typically reported .
to be more enjoyable by students than reading.
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Table 1
Aptitude Treatment Interaction Studies Which Have Examined Both Achievement and Enjoyment With Instruction
AUTHORS
Chan (I960)
Maier &
Jacobs (1966)
Maier &
Jacobs
(1964)
Morris &
Kimbrell
(1972)
Peterson
(1977)
Peterson
(1979)
Peterson &
Janicki
(1979)
Welch &
Walburg
(1972)
CONTENT
Accounting
Spanish
Spanish
Psychology
Social
Science
"alienation"
Educational
Psychology
Fractions
Physics
Ss
UG
Elcm.
Elem.
UG
HS
UG
Elem.
UG
METHOD
Conventional
Con + Modeling
Scrambled PI
Logical PI
TV Teacher
PI alone
TV Teacher + PI
Conventional
Keller Plan
Low structure
High structure
Low structure
High structure
Small Group
Large Group
Conventional
Harvard
Proj.
Physics
LOAD
Higher
Lower
Higher
Lower
Higher
Medium
Lower
Higher
Lower
Higher
Lower
Higher
Lower
Higher
Lower
Higher
Lower
TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS
High ability like low load but learned from high
load. No significant difference for low ability.
High ability like low load and learned from low load.
Low ability like high load but learned from low load.
High ability liked low load and learned from it. Low
ability liked high load but learned more from low
load.
High ability like low load but learned more from
high load. Low ability liked high but learned more
from low load.
High ability liked low load but learned more from
high load. Low ability liked high load but learned
more from low load.
High ability and anxious liked low load but learned
more from high load. Low ability and anxious liked
low load but learned more from high load.
High ability liked higli load and learned more from
high load. Low ability liked high load but learned
more from low load. Anxiety interacted.
High ability like low load but learned equally from
both. Low ability liked low load and learned best
from it.
Wispe
(1951)Social
ScienceUGPermissive
DirectiveHigher High ability liked high load but learned equally from
Lower both. Low ability liked high load but learned best
with low load.
n
D
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ACHIEVEMENT AND ENJOYMENT97
In addition to the lack of substantive
theoretical discussion of enjoyment in the studies
reviewed, there was very little consistency in the
measurement of the variable. Enjoyment of in-
struction was measured using adjective rating
scales (Chan, 1979; Maier
&
Jacobs, 1964, 1966),
projective methods (Wispe, 1951), question-
naires (Morris & Kimbrell, 1972; Welch &
Walburg, 1972), and Iikert-style scales (Peter-
son, 1977, 1979; Peterson & Janicki, 1979).
Some of the measures of enjoyment with instruc-
tion included an evaluation of teachers, content
and method (e.g., Peterson, 1977) and some
dealt exclusively with method (e.g., Chan,
1979).
In seven of the nine studies (Chan, I960;
Maier & Jacobs, 1964, 1966; Morris & Kimbrell,
1972;
Peterson, 1977, 1979; Welch & Walburg,
1972),
high ability students reported preferring
lower load methods. In two studies (Peterson &
Janicki, 1979; Wispe, 1951) highs liked the
higher load methods. A similar consistency is
found for lower ability students who report liking
higher load methods in six of the nine studies
(Maier &Jacobs, 1964,1966; Morris & Kimbrell,
1972;
Peterson, 1977, 1979; Wispe, 1951). In
two studies low ability students preferred lower
load methods (Peterson, 1977; Welch &
Walbutg, 1972), and in one study (Chan, I960),
there were no differences between low ability
preferences.
There is evidence in these studies to support
the generalization that students typically report
enjoying the method from which they learn the
least although they seem unaware that the most
enjoyable method yields less achievement. High
ability students typically report enjoying lower
load methods but generally learn more from the
higher load methods. Conversely, lower ability
students seem to like higher load methods
despite tiie observation that in these nine studies,
they most often learned best with the lower load
instructional methods.
Why Do Students Enjoy the Method
from Which they Learn the Least?
The reason for this antagonism between
achievement and enjoyment may stem from a
situation where students seem to enjoy investing
less effort to achieve and inaccurately assess the
effect of investing less effort on their subsequent
achievement. They appear to make judgments
based on their perceived efficiency. They will
report enjoying methods which appear to them
to bring maximum achievement with less invest-
ment of time and work. The decision that one
method is superior in efficiency may come from a
mistaken judgment that they are familiar enough
with a method to profit from it. It is the methods
which students perceive to be more familiar,
however, for which Berlyne (1964) would predict
the greatest enjoyment scores. But again it is not
dear whether students accurately assess the extent
to which they actually are familiar with a
method. It is possible that the manifest and
nominal characteristics of a method may only
seem familiar to students. Berlyne (1964) offers
evidence that objectively complex or demanding
stimuli are often perceived as subjectively simple
by subjects who locate familiar features in a com-
plex display and categorize the whole display as
"familiar".
New instructional methods often require
special cognitive skills and strategies to learn from
them . . . skills which are only gained through
experience with the new method. These same
new methods may offer manifest features which
are similar to more familiar methods and are
therefore classed as enjoyable by students who do
not recognize the discrepancy. The perceived
load of the method is different from the actual
load, and while the student enjoys the method,
they fail to maximize their learning. However, if
these explanations are correa, how is it that
students with differing ability report liking very
different instructional methods? From an ex-
amination of the nine studies reviewed, it ap-
pears that students at different ability levels
make different judgments about die efficiency of
their efforts.
Effort and Higher Ability Students
High ability students may report liking low
load methods most often because they perceive
them as offering efficient strategies for learning.
Lower load methods may be perceived as permit-
ting much less effort than higher ability students
expect to invest in the higher load methods.
Both Chan (1979) and Peterson. (1977, 1979)
reported similar perceptions of the performances
of higher ability subjects. Peterson (1977) notes
the selection of the lower load method by her
higher ability students and surmises that they
selected the "cuing" offered there. As Salomon
(1971) has suggested, however, these lower load
treatments often provide more than cues. In
many instances very detailed strategies for learn-
ing are modeled for students. These strategies aid
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98RICHARD E. CLARK
lower ability students but tend to interfere with
the learning of higher ability students who
already have successful strategies which work.
This was probably the case in the Chan (1979)
study, where the lower load methods modeled
specific strategies for solving accounting pro-
blems for college students, and in studies by
Peterson (1977, 1979) where students received
goals,
objectives, verbal importance markers,
synthesizing reviews, and transitions both pro-
vided and elicited by teachers, and in the Morris
and Kimbrell (1972) study where high ability
students seemed not to require the objectives,
small segments, and more structured Keller plan
method.
When learning strategies provided by the
lower load methods interfere with the existing
learning strategies of higher ability students, they
tend to profit more from higher load methods.
Students seem unaware of this interference,
however, and report enjoying the lower load
methods. When the lower load methods do not
interfere with the strategies used by higher ability
students, they will learn more from them, as they
did in the study by Wispe (1951) where the high
load methods appeared to be beyond the existing
skills of these students. It is assumed that higher
general ability students have acquired a greater
number and variety of learning strategies of the
kind Cattell (1971) and Horn (1976) have called
' 'crystallized' ' verbal-educational strategies.
Lower load methods employ many tactics to ex-
ternally process information for students which
may seem useful to the higher ability student
who does not recognize them as potentially in-
terfering, like the experienced baseball player
who is asked to use a different strategy for an
already successful batting position, accom-
modating the "easier" method may lower
performance.
Other methods, higher in load, merely "ac-
tivate" existing skills which they presume the
student has already acquired. These activation
(Salomon, 1971) methods are beneficial to the
highly skilled student but not to the lower ap-
titude student who does not have the skills being
activated. The lower ability student requires the
compensatory function of the lower load
methods where information is externally process-
ed and therefore complements the students lack
of relevant skills. When lower load treatments
supplant skills which intercfere with the learning
of higher ability students, they will tend not to
learn as well from them but they like them.
When high load methods activate skills that are
in the repetiore of high ability students, they
tend to learn more from them but still seem to
enjoy low load methods more.
Welch & Walburg (1972) contrasted conven-
tional higher load methods of teaching physics
with the newly developed Harvard Project
Physics (HPP). Higher ability students like HPP
but learned equally well from both methods. In
a reanalysis of this data by Cronbach & Snow
(1977) it appeared that HPP differed from con-
ventional instruction only in the motivation
strategies employed. There may have been very
few differences in either activation or supplanta-
don between the two methods. Wispe (1951)
taught social science to undergraduates with a
permissive higher load method which was en-
joyed more by high ability students who learned
as much from it as with the more directive
method. From the description provided in both
of these studies, it appears that the lack of
achievement differences for high ability students
in contrasting methods may have been due to the
lack of interference in the low load method.
Hypotheses. The tentative hypotheses sug-
gested in these studies for high ability students
are:
1.
If the instructional treatment serves a sup-
planting or modeling function and is perceived
by students as requiring a lower information pro-
cessing load, the treatment will be enjoyed more
by higher ability students, who will learn less
from the method than from higher load methods
that do not present interfering strategies for
learning.
2.
If the instructional treatment serves an ac-
tivating or cuing function and is perceived by
students as requiring a lower information pro-
cessing load, the treatment will be enjoyed more
by higher ability students who will learn more
from it than from lower load methods that pre-
sent interfering strategies for learning.
Effort and Lower Ability Students
Low ability students usually have a history of
lower achievement levels and may not perceive a
difference between low and high load methods
which will enhance their achievement. They may
simply view the more structured and directive
low load methods as requiring more time to
achieve the same disappointing results they have
experienced in the past. They may therefore
report enjoying higher load approaches because
these methods seems to permit less investment
of effort for a similar level of academic reward. In
some instances (Maier & Jacobs, 1964; Peterson,
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ACHIEVEMENT AND ENJOYMENT99
1977;
Peterson & Janicki, 1979; Wispe, 1951)
the higher load method may have given the low
ability student the chance to maintain a lower
profile so their failure is not so visible.
The less structured and permissive methods
also allow students to spend very little time
without attracting the attention of teachers or
peers.
It is the lower load methods which cue
lower ability learners to appropriate strategies,
provide or model skills, and monitor the time
they spend on tasks structuring devices that are
noticeably absent in the higher load approaches.
It is possible that lower ability students occa-
sionally recognize this dilemma. Wispe (1951)
reported that his lower ability students
"enjoyed' ' a permissive method but ' 'preferred' '
the more directive method. Preference here may
have indicated a recognition that the directive
method resulted in greater achievement. In this
study the permissive treatment also employed
familiar humor and examples which were
specifically excluded from the directive treat-
ment. Peterson & Janicki (1979) found that
students initially preferred the approach in which
they though less effort would be required. In this
study the high load treatment was a small group
instruction setting where little direction was pro-
vided unless the student specifically requested it.
The lower ability student could find considerable
anonymity in this setting and avoid expending
more than a minimum of effort.
Hypotheses. Tentative hypotheses concerning
lower ability students are:
3.
If a higher load instructional method serves
an activation function and is perceived by
students as providing a higher information pro-
cessing load, it will be enjoyed more by lower
ability students, who will learn less from this
method than from a lower load method.
4.
If the treatment serves a supplanting func-
tion and is perceived by students as providing a
lower information processing load, it will be en-
joyed less by lower ability stufdents, who will
learn more from it than from a higher load
method.
Other Factors which May Yield
Achievement/Enjoyment Antagonism
There are many other factors which yield both
negative and positive relationships between
achievement and enjoyment in ATI studies.
Chan (1979) has suggested that prior knowledge
interacts with ability to produce different
achievement and enjoyment outcomes. In her
study, high prior knowledge students who were
also high ability seemed bored by the supplant-
ing lower load method she offered and preferred
the higher load method. However, these
students learned more from the lower load
method. Chan used very few subjects, however,
and it is possible that her lower ability students
experienced a very difficult task and that there
were floor effects in the outcome measure.
Peterson (1977, 1979) and Peterson
&
Janicki
(1979) found interactions between ability and
anxiety which were interesting. In her studies,
Peterson has typically found that highly anxious
students tend to do better in low load treatments
regardless of ability. Presumably, the more anx-
ious student requires the structure of the lower
load method to mediate the effects of anxiety.
Peterson (1977, 1979) also has used the
subscales for Achievement through In-
dependence and Achievement through Confor-
mity of the California Personality Inventory as
aptitudes and has found interactions with this
method. Independent students achieved better
and seemed to like instruction better when allow-
ed to choose from among methods which dif-
fered in load. Conforming students achieved
more with low load methods and liked them bet-
ter. Whether personality measures such as these
eventually account for more variance in achieve-
ment and enjoyment than general ability is yet to
be determined. At the present time, however, it
appears that the CPI subscales are the best
predictors of compatible achievement and enjoy-
ment outcomes in ATI studies. Similar studies
employing personality measures have been con-
ducted by McLaughlin & Hunt (1973) who used
conceptual complexity and Holloway & Robin-
son (1979) with locus of control.
Summary. There is evidence in ATI studies
that sutdents tend to report enjoying the instruc-
tional method from which they learn the least.
When other things are equal, high ability
students prefer more structured and directive
methods which lower the learning "load" on
them, but learn best from more open and per-
missive approaches which place more "load' ' on
them. Lower ability students prefer permissive
methods, but learn best with more structured ap-
proaches. It seems to be the low ability student
who is most vulnerable to this antagonism be-
tween achievement and enjoyment. Both ability
groups seem to make inaccurate judgements
about the efficiency of their efforts. High ability
students appear to believe that more directive in-
structional methods will make their learning
easier, but those methods sometimes interfere
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100RICHARD E. CLARK
with their learning by providing strategies which
duplicate those they have already earned. Low
ability students seem to conclude that more per-
missive approaches are more enjoyable, perhaps
because they think that they can achieve as well
with them as with the more directive methods
which require much more effort. However, the
more permissive approaches do not provide the
structure and direction which they need to learn.
There are also indications that factors such as
prior knowledge of the subject matter, in-
dependence and conformity tendencies, locus of
control, and anxiety may also interact with ability
and method to influence achievement and enjoy-
ment differently.
More research is needed to clarify the reasons
why students enjoy methods which do not
enhance their achievement. Studies which vary
the information processing load of treatments,
general ability, and student perceptions of the
amount of effort they need to invest for different
achievement levels seem to be most profitable. In
addition, the roles of novelty, prior knowledge,
and anxiety in liking and achievement need to be
understood.
It seems reasonable to expect that the most
desirable goal of instruction would be that
students come to enjoy those instructional ap-
proaches from which they learn the most. It
would be premature to conclude that com-
patibility between these two useful outcomes is
possible.
Reference Note
1.
Kelly, E. The problems in measurement of student
satisfaction
in ATI
studies.
Paper presented at the meeting
of the American Educational Research Association,
Boston, April, 1980.
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