Raising Rural Student Achievement in Science Through Online Inquiry Based Teacher Professional Development

Abstract

Teacher scientific content knowledge is critical to improving student achievement in science. Teacher engagement in inquiry based instruction improves long term student understanding of science. This study assessed changes in rural, middle school students’ understanding of standards based heat and temperature concepts after teacher professional development using an inquiry focused course offered by Newton's Universe (NU) distance learning program. Experimental students whose teachers trained with NU (n = 1072 students; 33 teachers) were compared to control students whose teachers had no NU professional development (n = 295 students; 5 teachers). A 39 multiple choice pre/post assessment quantified student heat and temperature understanding. Pre test scores were not significantly different between the two groups (control: 36.95 ± 10.43% correct; experimental: 36.57 ± 10.51% correct; p>0.05). Training with NU significantly increased the experimental group's scores to 46.03 ± 14.58% correct relative to pre test (p<0.05), while the control group did not change (37.27 ± 13.71% correct; p>0.05). Thus, teacher professional development by distance learning enhanced rural middle school students’ understanding of heat and temperature concepts. This model for higher education outreach to geographically isolated teachers may be effective for improving student achievement across scientific disciplines.