Degree Name

EdD (Doctor of Education)

Program

Educational Leadership

Date of Award

12-1991

Committee Chair or Co-Chairs

J. Howard Bowers

Committee Members

Robert McElrath, Charles Burkett, Jay Reese, William Pafford

Abstract

The purpose of this study was twofold: Purpose 1 was to determine to what degree the desirable characteristics of a quality science program based upon the national standards as developed by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) were actually being achieved as perceived by the public school secondary science teachers and supervisory personnel in Tennessee. Purpose 2 was to determine to what degree the quality components of a good science curriculum based upon the national standards as developed by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) were considered to be desirable components of a quality secondary science program by the public school secondary science teachers and supervisory personnel in Tennessee. A random sample was taken from the target population of 1566 public, secondary science teachers and supervisory personnel, grades 9 through 12, from 125 school systems in Tennessee with the same core science offerings which if successfully completed, would allow students entrance into Tennessee Board of Regents institutions. A total of 20 research hypotheses were tested in the null format at the.05 level of significance using a two-tailed test. The Kruskal-Wallis One Way Analysis of Variance test was used to determine the difference in the ordinal data of the two independent groups. The Chi-Square test was obtained on those hypotheses dealing with ordinal and nominal data. The results of the study suggested that significant relationships existed between the perceived level of desirability of a school's science program and the perceived level of achievement of that program for all respondents in regard to the levels of: science background, general education, professional education, professional activities and development, contributions to the profession, and professional attitudes.

Document Type

Dissertation - unrestricted

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

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