Attitudinal effects of using primary source materials from Africa with high school students

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the attitudes of high school social studies students toward a geographical region and the residents of that region could be changed by exposing the students to fiction and non-fiction written by "insiders" of the region as opposed to traditional text material written by "outsiders" about the region. A second purpose was to determine whether the global attitudes, specifically those of reciprocity, acceptance, and international cooperation, of the students could be changed by the same treatment. Data were gathered from six social studies teachers in the Northwest and on the East Coast. Changes in attitudes towards Africans were measured in a pretest/posttest treatment/control design. Ninety-nine control group students and 235 experimental group students were given pretests consisting of a modified version of Osgood's semantic differential to determine students' attitudes toward Africans and the Newark, Delaware Global Attitude Scale to measure students' global attitudes prior to studying units on Africa. Upon completing either their normal units or the experimental treatment consisting of using Through African Eyes, classes were given the same two tests as a post-test. T-tests were used to compare the difference in pretest and posttest scores to determine whether there was a change in student attitudes towards Africans and whether there was a change in global attitudes. Analyses of the data indicated that using the "insider's" approach to teach about Africa was more successful in changing students' attitudes than using traditional text material. However, there was no significant difference between the groups on the global test. Only on the acceptance subscale was there a significant difference between the groups. Further studies are needed to determine to what degree the textual materials, supplementary materials, the teachers, or different teaching methodologies are responsible for changes in attitudes.