Teacher practices and middle-school science achievements

We report on the construction and application on an instrument entitled the " Science Achievement Influences Survey" to assess combined effects of student attitudes about science, peer interaction, and home support, and the frequency of student-centred and teacher-centred instructional practices on student achievement. Controlling for pre-test content knowledge, results indicated that student-centred teaching practices have a positive association with student achievement (p < .01; i. e., group experiments) and a negative association with teacher-centred teaching practices (p < .01; i. e., copying notes). Additionally, student attitudes about science were positively associated with student-centred teaching practices (p < .01) and negatively associated with teacher-centred teaching practices (p < .01). Most significantly, this study documents the predicted gains in science achievement associated with frequency of specific instructional practices used by middle-school science teachers. Especially noteworthy and significant is the finding that near-daily implementation of group experiments and reduction of extensive note-copying during class yield the greatest positive impact on student achievement. Outside of school, peer interaction and home support were not significantly associated (p > .05) with student achievement. The student sample included 611 middle-school science students with a wide range of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds.