The Impact of Urban Advantage on Teachers, Students, and Families in Metro Denver

• In Event: Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Understanding the Urban Advantage Middle School Science Initiative’s Implementation and Impact: A Multicity Analysis

Abstract

UA-Denver, a five year partnership between three metro area public school districts and three science-based cultural institutions, is designed to improve science literacy among seventh graders in the metro area. The vision for UA is that all participating students will engage in authentic and meaningful science investigations, a requisite for science literacy (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989). The National Research Council confirms that a deep understanding of science is grounded in doing science (Wilson & Bertenthal, 2005).

Schools in the three urban school districts in which the program was implemented were assigned to intervention or comparison status. The efficacy study is designed to examine the program’s impact for three target audiences: teachers, students, and families. The teacher PD provided by UA-Denver is intended not only to provide teachers with information and skills to implement the program and assist them in teaching students to complete student-driven investigations, but to increase their self-efficacy to do so. A survey of teachers based on the Teaching Science as Inquiry questionnaire (Smolleck, Zembal-Saul, & Yoder, 2006) was administered in the fall and spring in order to assess changes in teachers’ self-efficacy. The desired program impact on students was to improve standardized science scores and also to increase their affinity to science and aspirations for a career in science. To assess the increased science literacy, state-based standardized eighth grade science test scores are examined. In addition, a science assessment was conducted in the fall and spring; in two school districts this was the Northwest Evaluation Association’s (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress® for Science (2012). For the third district, it was an assessment based on items from the NWEA’s formative item assessment bank (Northwest Evaluation Association, 2011). To measure students’ science interest and aspirations, a survey was administered in the fall and spring that included the Modified Attitudes toward Science Inventory (mATSI) (Weinburgh & Steele, 2000). Family engagement was measured through a survey administered in the spring. This survey was modified from the mATSI to be appropriate for parents/guardians.

Given the nested nature of the data (students nested in teachers, nested in schools and school districts), analyses are conducted using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). The results will demonstrate whether UA-NYC (large urban district, one school district) can be successfully translated to another (a mid-size urban setting with multiple school districts). Findings suggest that UA students made slightly greater gains on the science assessment from fall to spring compared to comparison students, but changes from fall to spring on the mATSI among students were similar in both groups. Due to space limitations, we present results for one of the target audiences -- students. However, our full paper and presentation will present results for the program's impact on all three target audiences.

Authors

• Tanya Breeling, Denver Museum of Nature & Science

• Erin Caldwell, National Research Center

• Nancy Walsh, Denver Museum of Nature & Science