Mathew, A. (2023). Exploring the effects of technology professional development on the 8th grade NAEP mathematics achievement (Publication No. 30312058) [Doctoral dissertation,  St. John’s University]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.

Abstract:

“The purpose of this study was to examine if teachers’ participation in the educational technology professional development was a significant predictor in the 8th grade students’ mathematics achievement on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This non-experimental study analyzed selected variables from the 2013 NAEP 8th grade mathematics restricted dataset. The study considered students’ socio-economic status (SES), gender, race/ethnicity, teachers’ educational technology professional development, tenure-certification, and professional development on mathematic peer collaboration. Factors were created in principal component analysis with promax rotation method. The researcher has also used hierarchical regression analysis to explain how much of student achievement can be predicted through the independent variables. The study was guided by the amalgamation of two theoretical framework with Bandura’s self-efficacy (2013): Schulman’s Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) from 1987 and Mishra and Koehler’s Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) from 2006. The researcher used multiple regression analysis and hierarchical regression to assess the effects of SES, gender, race/ethnicity teachers’ educational technology professional development, tenure-certification, and professional development on mathematic peer collaboration with mathematics achievement serving as the dependent variable. In the initial step of the regression analysis, SES was considered as independent variable. In the following step, the students’ gender was included as an additional variable. This permitted the researcher to identify the influence of the students’ gender on the amount of explained variance. In the next step, the factor of educational technology professional development along with other factors were added to the analysis. The researcher was able to isolate the effect of the factor the amount of variance explained by repeating the process and filtering it for each of the race/ethnic subgroups reported in the NAEP. All these factors were then analyzed in hierarchical regression with mathematics achievement as the dependent variable to check the level predictability by each independent variable. Teachers should possess the necessary skills, including proficiency in technology, to develop lessons that effectively incorporate technology in instructional practices. The present study adds to the existing research that highlights the significance of technology-focused professional development for educators.”