Date of Award

1997

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Religious Education, PhD

First Advisor

John B. Youngberg

Second Advisor

Paul S. Brantley

Third Advisor

Elsie Jackson

Abstract

Problem. The Seventh-day Adventist church had no empirically developed instructional product in the form of an educational curriculum designed to enhance the cognitive awareness of and the modification of affect toward the disability condition. The purpose of this project was to develop empirically an instructional product in disability awarenesstraining for Seventh-day Adventist church members and their guests so to better build aninteractive, empowered, and inclusive sense of community.

Method. The developmental process of Baker and Schutz (1971) was used to produce and validate the instructional product. First, the content of the curriculum to train Seventh-day Adventist church members and their guests was identified through an examination of disability and disability awareness training literature.

The developing materials were divided into instructional units, arranged into a logical sequence, and introduced with behavioral objectives. It was established that the productwould be successful only when at least 80% of the attending learners achieved at least 80% on each objective.

In the developmental process, the instructional product was revised numerous times. Some of the learning units were streamlined, while others were expanded. Specific weaknesses, exposed during the tryout stages, were appropriately corrected and a participants' and instructor's manual were prepared. At the conclusion of the final presentation, the required standard for mastery was attained on all objectives.

Results. The instructional product, called the D.A.R.T. Seminar or Disability Awareness Reality Training Seminar, includes the instructor's manual with textual information covering each of the 20 points of the disability training seminar divided into four sections in combination with a separate participant's manual inclusive of review questions, pictorial representations of textual examples, and the general outline in progressive detail of each of the 20 disability training points.

This instructional product met an arbitrarily established criteria that held true to theresearcher's chosen methodology and represented a realistic majority of a convenient sample: 80% of the subjects on the final presentation reached each objective at or above the 80% arbitrarily chosen mastery level. The modification of affect was considered significant when the difference between the affective post-test and pre-test scores reached the 15.35% difference level. A t-test for dependent means, significant at the .05 level, was utilized.

Subject Area

People with disabilities, Discrimination against people with disabilities

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/dissertations/210/

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