| Description: |
In this poster we present the selected results from a student questionnaire administrated to about 1500 Austrian secondary school students (65 classes). The teachers of those students were engaged in (partly year-long) projects to foster good practices in teaching and learning. These projects, which had passed a carefully designed review process, were funded by a specific fund for teacher projects in mathematics, science and technology (MNI-Fund, part of the IMST3 initiative of the Austrian ministry of education, Krainer 2005). In the questionnaire we assessed student interest with respect to their regular classroom teaching as well as their interest while the teacher engaged in their class-room projects, subject-directed anxiety, and subject-related self-concept. In addition, we asked them to report on some of their or their teachers’ activities in class (e.g. “How often do you have to listen to a presentation of your teacher?”). All items were taken from either the PISA (2000) questionnaire, or the national PISA supplement of Germany or Austria (“PISA Plus”). In our first analysis, we found that during the projects, teaching was less teacher-centred (students reported more individual and group work). Self-directed student work was positively linked with student interest (correlational analysis). Multi-level analysis further revealed a whole-class impact of about 10%. In our poster we will briefly present the context of the study, i.e. the teachers’ (self-)selection, and teachers’ activities within the MNI-Fund. We will reanalyze and contrast the data with the mathematics classes only (27 classes). Finally, we will use our findings to present a picture of how Austrian mathematics students of engaged teachers perceive their mathematical school life. |