Role of Medium of Instruction on the Development of Cognitive Processes

Abstract

The present study was designed to examine the effect of medium of instruction on the development of cognitive processes. For this purpose, a sample of 80 children, 40 each from grade IV (aged 8-9 years) and  grade VI (aged 10-11 years) were selected. In each age group, 20 children were studying in an English medium school and  the other 20 in an Odia medium school. All the children were administered two tests each of planning, attention, simultaneous, and successive processing. The data were statistically analyzed with the help of  2 (medium of instruction) X 2 (grade)  Analyses of Variance. The results revealed significant main effects of medium of instruction for almost all the measures of cognitive processes suggesting higher performance level of  the English medium school children in comparison to their  Odia medium counterparts. The cognitive processes were found to be developmentally sensitive as evident from significant main effects of grade. The results were discussed within the framework of PASS model.

Key Words: Attention, Bilingual education, English medium education, Odia medium education, Planning, Simultaneous processing, Successive processing