Underrepresented Minority Students in Four Urban School Districts: A Study of Technology Use and Student Academic Performance in Math Grades Four and Eight
Date
2015
Authors
Blackmon, Olivia Majesky
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Abstract
Over the past two decades, access to technology at home and in schools has increased significantly. While nearly all children have access to technology, there continues to be an ongoing debate over the effective use of technology and its relationship to student achievement. Studies have demonstrated inconclusive results, with findings revealing both statistically significant positive and negative results between the use of technology and student achievement. Researchers believe that these debatable results are attributed to using basic regression models to examine the relationship between technology and student achievement in mathematics based on race/ethnicity, gender, or socio-economic status, while analysis should explore a multi-level approach due to the nested nature of student data (Wenglinsky, 2005 and Warschauer, 2011). Since students are organized at more than one level, and nested within the context of their environment, an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) approach assessing different environmental contexts could potentially lead to more conclusive and meaningful results. Thus, the purpose of the research study is to examine a multi-level approach using OLS to determine if technology access, frequency and usage have an impact on grade four and eight mathematics student achievement across four areas of investigation: home effects, overall-school effects, teacher effects, and student-reported classroom effects.
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Keywords
Sociology, Social sciences education, Educational technology, Math, NAEP, Standardized Exam, Student Achievement, Technology, TPACK