Students' Opportunities to Learn Science: Student Access to Inquiry-Based Science Instruction

• In Event: 65.050 - The Intersection of Education Finance and Policy

Abstract

Using data from the NAEP science assessment for grade eight, this study examines the relationship between student characteristics and access to inquiry-based instruction, and the role that school-level instructional resources play in supporting this pedagogy. We examine the extent to which systematic differences in instructional practices create differential opportunities to learn among student groups, and the ways in which the availability and type of resources mediate these relationships. Initial findings suggest that students not only encounter differential opportunities to learn science based on where they go to school, these opportunities closely depend on resources – a discovery that has the potential to conceptually and empirically contribute to how we understand and respond to inequities in the opportunities to learn science.  

Authors

• Tammy Kolbe, The University of Vermont

• Beth White, University of Vermont