| Using the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) restricted-data set, the researcher examined the national sample and the NAEP reported sub-groups of gender, race/ethnicity, and socio-economic status (SES). This researcher investigated how factors of student technology use in school and outside school, student attributes, academic self-concept. and student home environment, interact and affect 8th grade student's mathematics achievement levels in school for the sample population and reporting groups of gender, socio-economic status, and race/ethnicity. The NAEP exams are given to a nationally representative population of students and sub-populations, allowing researchers and education evaluators to measure student knowledge, instructional experiences, and school environment using a "common yardstick" (NCES.ed.gov, 2011c). NAEP datasets are used by researchers and educators to determine national and local education policy because of its inherent reliability of measurement procedures and practices, and accountability and evaluation systems (Davis & Buckendahl, 2009). This was a non-experimental study and the author contributes to the complex issue of understanding how multiple factors correlate and contribute to student achievement. As we begin the second decade of the 21st century, there is little research on how student technology use outside school affects student achievement in school. Over the last 20 years, society and daily life has changed because of technology and the Internet (Kolikant, 2009). Education policy makers need to consider how factors of student technology use inside school and student technology use outside school influence factors that researchers have already identified as statistically significant in predicting student mathematic achievement in school: student attributes, motivation, academic self-concept, and student home environment. This investigator adds to research on how student technology use outside school and inside school can predict a student's mathematic achievement in school, to inform instructional decisions for 8th grade math classrooms. Educators need to base instructional decisions on research based findings. The NAEP data used in this research study are derived from a sample group of 167,300 eighth grades students that represented a national population of over 3,000,000 eighth grade students. |
