While No Child Left Behind ushered in the age of the "highly qualified" teacher, accountability focus has been shifted to the "highly effective" teacher, defined as teacher impact on student achievement. The Science Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) is used to judge the adequate yearly progress of students in Texas public schools. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of teacher factors (i.e., ethnicity, gender, teaching experience, university selectivity, certification route, National Center for Education Statistics Locale/Code, number of science content and pedagogical course semester credit hours, grade point average for science content and pedagogical coursework) on student achievement using the eighth grade Science TAKS. The primary dependent variables were students' five objective scores and their overall scores on the eighth grade Science TAKS examination. The sample was 44 eighth grade science teachers and 4,119 students in Texas public schools. Multiple linear regression models enabled examinations of the relationships between teacher quality variables and student achievement. No significant relationships between the variables were found. Small effect sizes for the beta weights and structure coefficients occurred between teachers' science credit hours and TAKS objectives to explain 20% of the variance for TAKS Living Systems and the Environment, 39% of the variance for TAKS Structures and Properties of Matter, and 21% of the variance for TAKS Earth and Space Systems. Teacher experience accounted for 24% of the variance with TAKS Structures and Properties of Matter, and pedagogical credit hours explained 30% of the variance with TAKS Motion, Forces, and Energy. Science GPA explained 31% of the variance for the TAKS Earth and Space Systems objective. Policy makers should examine NCLB assumptions about teacher content knowledge as a significant indicator of teacher effectiveness via student achievement on standardized tests. While measuring content knowledge provides a simple, efficient, and cost effective form of accountability, the small effect size indicated other factors, including teaching practice, need investigation.

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Whole language method--Integration of science and literature--Language centered orientation--Integrated curriculum.

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RESEARCH REPORT SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND, JOHANNESBURG, IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE. / The purpose of this study to determine which of the methods of teaching experimental work, namely; demonstrations filmed-experiments or illustrating experiments using the chalkboard, is the most effective method of teaching pupils at the secondary school level. Forty-two Standard Eight Physical Science pupils from a township secondary school, registered under the Department of Education and Training and situated on the East Rand served as the subjects for this study. Pupils were divided in to three equivalent groups, each with similar marks in science and each group was exposed to three different teaching methods for three different topics. The pupils wrote a test for each topic after the exposure to one of the methods. The research data were statistically analysed, using non parametric statistics ( viz., the t-test). The analysis of the data indicates that none of the methods was consistently superior to the others. / Andrew Chakane 2020

This study investigated the effects of technology education, science, and mathematics (TSM) curriculum integration on the technological problem-solving ability of eighth grade technology education students. The researcher used a quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control group design to compare the performance of students receiving correlated TSM integration to those not receiving integration in an adapted Technology, Science, Mathematics Integration Project Activity (LaPorte & Sanders, 1993). The students were to design, construct, and evaluate wind collectors to generate electricity. The collectors were mounted on a generator for the pretest and posttest measurements. The measure for treatment effect was the output wattage of the generator for each student's wind collector. The samples were drawn from middle schools that had two technology education teachers in the same school, each teaching eighth graders. The pilot study sample (N = 51) was selected from a middle school in rural south-central Virginia. The study sample (N = 33) was selected from a middle school in a suburb of Richmond, Virginia. Treatment group technology education teachers employed echnological problem solving, and they correlated instruction of key concepts with science and mathematics teachers using the adapted TSM Integration Activity. The control group technology education teachers did not correlate instruction with science and mathematics teachers. There was no significant difference between the treatment and control groups for technological problem solving. Evidence suggested that students were applying science and mathematics concepts. The researcher concluded that TSM curriculum integration may promote the application of science and mathematics concepts to technological problem solving and does not hinder the technological problem-solving ability of eighth technology education students. / Ph. D.

Bibliography: pages 66-71. / In 1984 Bybee used 262 science educators from 41 countries to develop an instrument for measuring their ranked priorities of science and technology related global problems. In 1995 the original Bybee scale was updated and clarified, and a new 15-item version, the Le Grange Global Priorities Instrument (LGPI) was piloted, refined and administered in fifteen schools to 946 secondary school pupils speaking three different home languages in two provinces in South Africa. The study is an enlargement of the work of Bybee and Mau (1986); Bybee and 'Najafi (1986); Ndodana, Rochford and Fraser (1994); and Le Grange, Rochford and Sass (1995), and is carried out in the context of the new key programme of Meeting Basic Needs presented in Section 1.4.1 of the Government White Paper on the Reconstruction and Development Programme for the New South Africa which states:- The basic needs of people extend from job creation, land and agrarian reform to housing, water and sanitation, energy supplies, transport, nutrition, health care, the environment, social welfare and security (Government Gazette No. 16085, 23 November 1994:9). The 946 pupils surveyed in this study in 1995 comprised 414 rural-Northern Sotho pupils (sample 1) from the Northern Province; 189 urban-Xhosa speaking pupils (sample 2) and 343 urban-English speaking pupils (sample 3) from the Western Cape.

This preliminary research study aimed to investigate, with the aid of the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI), the actual and the preferred laboratory environments as perceived by 264 first, second and third year college Science and Biology students in Cape Town, South Africa. This investigation sought to answer the following main questions: * Are the English and the Afrikaans versions of the SLEI valid and reliable for use as perceptive instruments in a South African context? * What are the relationships between variables such as class membership, the year level of study, the type or level of the science subject studied, the particular lecturer concerned, home language and gender and the students' perceptions of their science laboratory classroom environments? * Do appreciable differences occur between the actual and the preferred environments as perceived by the students? * Are the findings of the present investigation consistent with the results of parallel investigations undertaken overseas? The data was collected by means of standard answer sheets, and analysed by comparison of the mean scores, standard deviations, discriminant validities and the alpha reliabilities of the various scales of SLEI. Bibliography: p. 130-141.