The study involved a pretest-posttest design with treatment and control
groups. The subjects were preservice secondary teachers enrolled in second
year curriculum studies units. The treatment group comprised science majors
and the control group comprised English majors. A total of38 science students
and 37 English students was pretested, and from these 19 science and 19 English
students could be matched in pairs on identical pretest scores. These subjects
formed the treatment and control groups which therefore had the same mean
pretest score and standard deviation.