Research in Business Education

c) Business teachers who teach or have taught basic business subjects have a more favorable attitude toward teaching basic business subjects than teachers who do not teach or have not taught basic business subject. .
             Bookkeeping and Accounting.
             Harring (25) in a review of research in bookkeeping abstracted 242 studies; he found a marked decline in completion of such studies since the 1935-1959 period. He reported substantial recent interest in surveys, methods, and procedures of instruction, and course content. His study has value because of its synthesis off findings and the opportunity it provides to determine areas where research if needed.
             A study of prognosis by House (30) illustrated the use of statistical tools of analysis. He found that a combination of certain measures of arithmetic achievement, IQ, and ninth-grade marks were predictive of achievement in bookkeeping courses. Further, he demonstrated that 60 per cent of the pupils he studies had insufficient reading ability to deal with the large beginning vocabulary loads of bookkeeping textbooks; he suggested that there was need for better texts, more emphasis upon discussion, and slower teacher presentation.
             Nicks (53) surveyed nonbookkeepers in offices to determine their bookkeep8ing duties. Among other important findings he concluded that bookkeeping duties of nonbookkeepers were easily learning, and he isolated routines in which knowledge of bookkeeping principles and theory were not required. He saw no justification for a year of bookkeeping training as job preparation for nonbookkeepers. Day (15), Stoner (65), and numerous master's studies surveyed bookkeeping practices of small businesses in smaller communities.
             In his attempt to determine the effectiveness of various types of laboratory treatment for beginning college accounting students, Larson (39) found that students assigned to "enriched" laboratory treatment obtained insignificantly higher mean achievement scores in accounting than those students assigned to the "regular" or to the neglected laboratory treatments.