Pine et al (2006) found that students in the hands-on and textbook groups
performed similarly on the multiple choice test and performance assessments (one of four
performance assessments showed a significant advantage for the hands-on students).
Table 1 summarizes these results for the hands-on and textbook classes which fail to
support either the hypothesis that textbook classes would do better on the multiple choice
test, or that hands-on classes would do better on the performance assessments. They
4 AERA 2008, Foley & McPhee
concluded that students in both groups performed poorly on average and there was not a
large advantage for the hands-on students.