SOME FACTORS AFFECTING STUDENTS' SCIENCE ACHIEVEMENT: TIMSS 2011 ACCORDING TO THE INVESTIGATION OF TEACHER' THE LEVEL

The aim of the TIMSS Project is to provide comparative data on mathematics and science in order to develop education and training on countries' educational systems. For this purpose, it is collected data about the students' performance in science and mathematics, education and training systems, training programs, student, teacher, and characteristics of the schools. TIMSS, cycled every four years, is the world's largest educational research. In this study, the factors that affect science achievement of Turkish students participating in TIMSS 2011 are discussed at the level of teachers and students. The hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) method was used for which factors predict the student science achievement scores. SPSS 20 and the student version of HLM 7.00 was used to analyze the data. As a result, 29% of the variability in students' science achievement scores are explained by classes (teachers) and 71% can be explained by differences among students. Science achievement at the level of students is predicted meaningful for gender, the level of experience of the teacher and sex variables but, the educational level and science graduation can't be predicted by the variables significant.