Research for Curriculum Development in Public and Hospital Schools

Abstract

Social, personal and environmental achievement related influences in the lives of 1070 Ss, enrolled In a state hospital school system and a public school system, were studied in an attempt to Improve the curricula available to these and similar young people. A data-gathering instrument was created and used to gather information relative to 73 preselected variables. The data were studied to Identify relationships between these variables and educational retardation, and to determine differences between educationally and noneducationally retarded public school and hospital pupils in terms of variables found to be commonly related to preselected achievement criteria. Although many of the variables found to be significantly related (5% level) to the achievement of educationally retarded public school youth were also found to be so related to the achievement of noneducationally retarded youth, many significant differences between the variable measures were found. Similar results were obtained when public school pupils were compared with hospitalizd pupils. Finally, patterns of difference were Identified when all data were pooled. Experimental curriculum development was based upon this study.