Teacher Training Programs, Teacher Practices and Student Performance in Science: Evidence from a Randomized Study in French Primary Schools
Suzanne Bellue, Adrien Bouguen, Marc Gurgand, Valerie Munier, and André Tricot.
Abstract:
We conduct a large randomized study to assess the impact of an in-service teacher training program on inquiry-based teaching in science in several French primary schools. The study comprises 134 randomly assigned volunteer teachers and two cohorts of about 2,500 students. In addition to standardized student test scores and motivation measures, we collect information on teacher practices and pedagogical knowledge. We find that the training program (80 hours over 2 years) increases the weekly hours of science instruction as well as the number of hands-on science experiments conducted in class, and generally improved teachers’ reported pedagogical approach (+0.30 SD). However, the effects on student performance are disappointing: impacts are significant only for scientific knowledge, not for skills, and they fade out one year after the end of the training program, while our measures of motivation become negative. These results highlight the difficulty to train experienced teachers in a way that has lasting influence on their students’ performance.