A study compared the effects on student achievement and retention between the problem-solving approach and the subject-matter approach in teaching a selected problem area in vocational agriculture. A quasi-experimental design, a variation of a nonequivalent control group design, was used. Treatments were randomly assigned to classes enrolled in introductory vocational agriculture courses in Illinois high schools, resulting in 66 students in the problem-solving treatment group and 60 in the subject-matter treatment group. Findings indicated that the problem-solving approach was no more or less effective as measured by student achievement, regardless of the cognitive level of the questions. It was no more or less effective in producing higher scores on the delayed retention test, regardless of the cognitive level of the questions. For the high-level cognitive items, students taught by the problem-solving approach exhibit lower achievement loss. Students' attitudes toward the problem-solving approach were slightly more positive, but the difference was not great enough to be considered statistically significant. (YLB)