Teacher-Level Factors that Influence Students’ Science and Technology Culture: HLM Analysis

Abstract

It has been observed that there is an issue of declining student enrolment in science and technology at upper secondary level, as well as low performance of Malaysian students. These concerns have been recorded by Trends in Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS), and Performance for International Student Achievement (PISA) tests from 2003 to 2009. As a result, the policy of 60:40 target ratio of science to non-science students which has been set by Ministry of Education Malaysia (MOE) may be affected. Accordingly, this scenario has raised concerns and questions related to the quality of science teachers, especially in the aspect of teachers’ pedagogical skills. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify the impact of Form Two science teacher’s Productive Pedagogy on the Science and Technology Culture among the students. For this purpose, the descriptive study using multi-stage sampling technique involving 40 science teachers and 800 Form Two students at several secondary schools in Seremban, Negeri Sembilan has been carried out. The collected data were analyzed using Hierarchical Linear Modelling (HLM) software to identify the influence of teacher’s Productive Pedagogy on the students’ Science and Technology Culture. Based on the HLM analysis, it indicates that 40 percent of the differences in the Science and Technology Culture level of practice are contributed by a number of factors at a teacher level. Some of the factors are teacher’s gender, age, type of school and dimension of Intellectual Quality (one of the dimensions in Productive Pedagogy). Thus, the results of HLM show that teacher level factors significantly influence the student’s outcomes or achievements.