Jane Butler Kahle

Classroom, Home and Peer Environment Influences on Student Outcomes in Science and Mathematics: An Analysis of Systemic Reform Data.

Using secondary analysis of a large database from a Statewide Systemic Initiative, we examined the effects of several types of environments on student outcomes. Over 3 years, nearly 7,000 students in 392 classes in 200 different schools responded to a questionnaire that assesses class, home, and peer environments as well as student attitudes. Students also completed an achievement measure that, developed by scientists, teachers, and science educators, was not aligned with any particular curriculum. Students were enrolled in middle‐school science and mathematics classes in schools that had participated in the Statewide Systemic Initiative. Rasch analyses allowed us to compare across student cohorts and across schools. Findings confirmed the importance of extending research on classroom learning environments to include the learning environments of the home and the peer group. Although all three environments accounted for statistically significant amounts of unique variance in student attitudes, only the class environment (defined in terms of the frequency of use of standards‐based teaching practices) accounted for statistically significant amounts of unique variance in student achievement scores. The findings are supported by other studies of systemic reform in the United States.

A comparison of elementary teacher attitudes and skills in teaching science in Australia and the United States

A study, originally don in Australia in 1983, was replicated in an urban-suburb in the Unitd States. The Australian project vivolved matched pairs of year-fiv teachers in one of two workshops. One workshop taught the skills of teaching electricity, while the other one discussed issues in gender equity in science education (active participation of both girls and boys, comparble student-teacher interactions, and research findings concerning equity). The U.S. study provided three types of workshops (skills, equity and skills, and equity) for comparable groups of fourth and fifth grade teachers. All teachers and their students were subsequently obseved during lessons involving an electricity unit, queried both students and teachers concerning the appropriateness of different fields of science for boys and girls and their interest and aptitudes in doing various types of science. Results from both studies suggest that gender differences in student attitudes toward science may be amellorated by specific types of teacher workshop.

Effective Science Instruction: Impact on High-Stakes Assessment Performance.

Abstract This longitudinal prospective cohort study was conducted to determine the impact of effective science instruction on performance on high-stakes high school graduation assessments in science. This study provides powerful findings to support authentic science teaching to enhance long-term retention of learning and performance on state-mandated assessments. Students experienced some combination of zero to three effective teachers throughout their middle school experience. Findings revealed that all students who experienced effective science teachers who engaged students in inquiry-based science outperformed students who had less effective teachers. Additionally, those who had more effective teachers over time performed increasingly better. Implications for stakeholders will be discussed.

Equitable Science Education: A Discrepancy Model

A 15-year-old girl in rural America described the current crossroads in science when she said: ‘There are some women scientists; but men have been in it longer. Women can do the same job as men. They may have a different way of thinking and might improve science’ (Kahle, 1985, p. 68). Her words were fortuitous because they were spoken a few days before Barbara McClintock won the Nobel Prize for looking at maize in a different way and for thinking about genetics in a different manner. McClintock’s work, unrecognised and even scorned for decades, epitomises the disadvantages that not only individual women but also the scientific community and society as a whole suffer because of a lack of equity in science education. Perhaps Maria Mitchell, one of the first American women to be recognised as a scientist, said it best: In my younger days, when I was pained by the half-educated, loose, and inaccurate ways which are (women) all had, I used to say ‘how much women need exact science’, but, since I have known some workers in science who were not always true to the teachings of nature, who have loved self more than science, I have now said ‘how much science needs women’. (Maria Mitchell’s presidential address to the Third Congress of Women in 1875; quoted in Rossiter, 1982, p. 15)

Informing Teaching and Research in Science Education Through Gender Equity Initiatives

The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, we present a cross-national comparison of the implementation of a gender equity initiative in Australia and the USA. Second, we provide an example of the ways in which both teaching and research in science education can be informed through the development and implementation of gender equity initiatives. The chapter documents the stages in a collaborative and evolving process involving two almost identical studies, one in Australia and one in the USA, and uses the combined results of the two studies in developing an explanatory model of the relationship between gender and science in schools and classrooms. Both studies used inservice workshops not only to address primary school teachers’ lack of background knowledge and skill in teaching physical science, but also to give them training in gender-equitable teaching strategies. Both interventions were monitored and evaluated in terms of student and teacher attitudes, beliefs and behaviours in relation to science.