Academic achievement, attitudes, and retention: Application of whole brain instruction in the Principles of Accounting course in central Taiwan (China)

This study examines the academic achievement, attitudes, and retention of students in the Principles of Accounting course in three vocational high schools in central Taiwan by comparing two instructional methods: whole brain and conventional instruction. The research method used a quasi-experimental design during the four week treatment period. Standardized content tests were used to measure achievement and retention (four weeks later) and a four-point Likert scale was used to measure participants' attitudes toward learning.; In academic achievement, a private school, whose students had the lowest average entrance scores of the three schools, showed a significant treatment effect on the first content posttest; the other two schools did not. As for attitudes, a significant preference for the treatment method was found among the participants of only one of the schools, a public school.; Finally, concerning retention, all three treatment classes scored significantly higher on the second content posttest than the first, and one private school in the control group also increased significantly in the second content posttest. Dividing students into three different scoring levels based on their first content posttests is another way to investigate retention. Based on the results of this, retention in the treatment group either stayed the same or increased significantly while retention in the control group, depending on scoring level, varied from significantly increased, to no change, or to significantly decreased.