Date of Award

Spring 5-1-1989

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Communication

First Advisor

Dan Pyle Millar

Second Advisor

C. Sue Davis

Third Advisor

Sharon J. Dailey

Abstract

AIDS, teenage suicide, drug abuse, date rape, teenage pregnancy, and many others are currently prevalent social issues in our secondary schools that need to be discussed in the classroom using the most effective means possible. For years discussion of such topics in the high school classroom either has been absent altogether or has been handled in the form of a lecture. This study asks if readers theatre might be a more effective method of introducing information on such issues to high school students. AIDS was chosen as the issue to utilize in this study. The subjects consisted of 58 ninth grade students. Three sections of English 9 were chosen at random and labeled Group A, Group B, or Group c. All three groups were given a two-section, multiple choice test, of which one section was testing knowledge acquisition and the other was examining attitude change. These tests were administered one week prior to the stimulus, immediately following the stimulus, and one week after the stimulus. Group A was presented a readers theatre production on AIDS, Group B received a lecture on AIDS, and Group c, the control group, received no stimulus. Since the hypothesis of this study was that readers theatre would have more impact in terms of knowledge acquisition and attitude change than would a lecture in introducing information on sensitive issues to high school students, it was expected that Group A would demonstrate more knowledge acquisition and a more positive attitude change than would Groups B and C. Analysis of the data discovered that readers theatre did have more impact than did the lecture in terms of knowledge acquisition; however, the attitude differences discovered between groups were not sufficient to confirm this part of the hypothesis.

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