Investigation of the variables affecting the students' teog science achievement with multilevel regression model

This study investigated the variables affecting the achievement of eighth grade students who participated in TEOG science exam by multi-level regression analysis. The variables included in research are the students' attitudes, confident, value, engagement in science, socioeconomic status, school type, school region and teacher experience. The applied questionnaire was obtained from variables in TIMSS 2011. Socioeconomic level, attitude, engagement in science, value and confident factors were determined by exploratory factor analysis. The study group consisted of 1049 students and 41 teachers. In the first sub-problem, it was investigated whether the science achievement of the students differed significantly among the schools. According to the results, achievement differ among the schools. Approximately 16.3% of the differences observed in science achievement are due to differences among schools, and 83.6% differences among students. In the second sub-problem, student characteristics explain the difference between science achievements of the schools have been examined. When socioeconomic level, attitude, engagement in science, value and confidence variables are examined; socioeconomic level, attitude and confident variable were found statistically significant relationship with achievement. Socioeconomic level and confident variables have positive effect on achievement, while attitude variables have negative effect on achievement. In the third sub-problem, student and school characteristics affect success have been examined. The school-level variables included in the model are teacher experience, region and school type. It was determined regression coefficients of the added school level variables were not significant. While decreasing in level-2 variance value is expected, variance value is increased by adding the school level variables.