| This study investigated the effects of written teacher comments on daily quizzes and differing amounts of homework upon the academic performance of Hispanic students enrolled in basic mathematics classes of an inner-city high school.; A pretest-posttest quasi-experimental factorial design was adopted for the study. Six intact classes taught by this experimenter were randomly assigned to treatment conditions that were made up by crossing three levels of "feedback on quizzes" and two levels of "amount of homework." The three levels of "feedback on quizzes" were comprised of the "quizzes with teacher comments" group, the "quizzes without teacher comments" group, and the "no quiz" group. Regarding "amount of homework," the two levels were "homework group A" and "homework group B"--their major difference being that the latter group had twice as many assigned homework problems as compared to the former group.; Prior to implementation of the treatments, two pretests and one IQ test were administered to all classes. Instructions concerning consumer mathematics lasted for 15 weeks, during which time differing amounts of homework assignments, single-problem daily quizzes, and written teacher comments were dispensed to the appropriate treatment groups. At the end of the semester, the "Consumer Competency Test" (one of the pretests) was readministered as the posttest.; By defining "feedback on quizzes" and "amount of homework" as independent variables and academic achievement as dependent variable, a two-way analysis of covariance (covariates being IQ and the two pretests) was utilized to analyze the data. With significance level set at {dollar}p<.05,{dollar} results indicated that: (1) the differences in achievement among the three "feedback on quizzes" groups were highly significant {dollar}(p<.001);{dollar} (2) a priori comparison tests further revealed that the "quizzes with teacher comments" group had significantly higher achievement scores than either the "quizzes without teacher comments" {dollar}(p<.05){dollar} or the "no quiz" (p =.0001) groups; (3) no statistically significant difference in achievement was found between "homework group A" and "homework group B"; and (4) there was no significant interaction between "feedback on quizzes" and "amount of homework" based on mean posttest scores. |
