Effect of personalization of instructional context on the achievement and attitudes of hispanic students

This study investigated the effects of three levels of personalization—individualized, group, and non-personalized—on the mathematics achievement of 123 seventh-grade Hispanic boys and girls. Personalization was accomplished by using personal information provided by students on a biographical inventory. Subjects were randomly assigned within sex to one of three versions of a two-day instructional program on one-step and two-step mathematics word problems. Subjects in both the individual and group personalization treatments scored significantly higher on the posttest than those in the nonpersonalized treatment on two-step word problems, but not on one-step problems. Subjects in the individualized treatment had significantly more positive attitudes toward the instruction than those in the other two treatments.

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