The Importance of Teacher Content Knowledge for Student Learning
In the summer of 2006, a collaborative between a university and several school districts administered ATLAST's force and motion teacher assessment to the high school teachers participating in the project. During the 2006-07 school year, these same teachers (N=60) were invited to administer the ATLAST force and motion student assessment to each of their 9th grade physics classes immediately before and after a unit of instruction on force and motion. The study was designed to address two research questions:
Do students score higher on the assessment following instruction, and if so, what is the magnitude of the change?
Assuming a significant change in student scores exists, is there a relationship between this change and scores on the teacher assessment?
ATLAST and the project jointly developed a numbering system that would allow: (1) student pre- and post-test responses to be matched without using student names, and (2) linking of student scores to teacher scores.
The project assembled teacher and class packages of materials, shipped them to the schools, and followed up with teachers to encourage response. Twenty-five teachers returned completed materials, representing 1,730 students. The project shipped all materials back to ATLAST, who scored the student assessments and analyzed the results.
Data analysis took into account the nested nature of the student data: pre- and post-test scores were nested within students, which were nested within teachers. A 3-level hierarchical linear model (HLM) was used, with scores at Level 1, students at Level 2, and teachers at Level 3.
