School Effectiveness and Science Achievement: Are There Any Sex Differences?

The purpose of this study was to use secondary analysis of an Australian database known as the Second International Science Study (SISS) to examine the role of student, school and home factors in explaining student differences in science achievement, especially on sex differences. Student characteristics investigated in the study included home background, attitude towards science, ethnic background, verbal and mathematics abilities, and sex of the student. The study applied the Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM) to analyze data from 4,917 14-year-old students from 233 Australian schools; it also incorporated the Rasch analysis model for the construction of the science achievement scale. The correlations between student characteristics and their science achievement indicated that sex, attitude towards science, and ethnicity of the student are comparatively weak correlates of science achievement and that verbal and quantitative ability and socio-educational level had much stronger correlations. School effects found to be statistically significant in influencing student differences in science achievement included the percentage of female teachers in the school, teacher decision making, average socio-educational level of students, average verbal ability, average quantitative ability, and average ethnicity of students. These student and school effects were utilized to develop a preliminary integrated model of school effectiveness. No statistically significant variations in sex differences in science achievement between schools was found. The study concluded that results of this preliminary study indicate that further path analysis and use of the HLM for all countries in the SISS should provide useful information regarding the relationship between student achievement, attitudes towards science, and other home and school environment characteristics. A list of 29 references is provided. (MDH)