Date of Award

Spring 2005

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Curriculum, Instruction, and Leadership

First Advisor

Randall Parker

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to compare mathematics teacher preparation and experience to the achievement of middle school students (grades 6–8) on the mathematics section of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). Using a theoretical framework, the research examined the extent to which the teacher qualification variables were related to the student achievement. Measures of teacher qualifications included four independent variables: (a) number of mathematics content hours, (b) level of teaching certification, (c) number of years teaching experience, and (d) number of years teaching middle school/junior high mathematics. Participants in this causal-comparative study included 97 teachers and 6,391 students from the middle schools in Spring Independent and Spring Branch Independent School Districts near Houston, Texas. The researcher obtained the archival test scores from spring 2004 of the respective districts and determined a mean student score for each teacher. The responses to teacher surveys were analyzed using linear regression of the independent variables and showed a 0.04 level of significance between teacher qualifications and student performance on the TAKS. The researcher also examined the ANOVA results which indicated that only the number of years teaching middle school mathematics had a significant relationship to student achievement with a statistical significance (p = .03).

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