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PRISMS Evidence of EffectivenessPRISMS Project
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PRISMS Evidence of EffectivenessPRISMS Project
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Effectiveness of the PRISMS program has been evaluated in terms of physics content achievement with the New York Regents Physics Examination, the development of reasoning and science problem-solving skills using the Test of Integrated Process Skills (TIPS) and attitudes toward learning physics with the Physics Attitude Index (PAI). The validation study was conducted with 45 PRISMS schools and 30 control schools during the 1985-86 academic year. Evaluation was based on gains scored by the participating students on pre and post tests. This study has been replicated each year since the initial evaluation. Research studies have compared PRISMS student gains on the above measures as compared to non-PRISMS control school gains on a beginning of year pretest to end-of-year post-test basis. Recent studies have shown PRISMS achievement scores increase from 23.2 to 31.1 compared to the control group with a gain from 23.8 to 27.7. Reasoning skills, utilizing the TIPS scores, increased by the PRISMS students, on the average, from 26.7 to 27.7, while the control students' scores decreased from 27.4 to 25.9. Post-test scores may have been depressed by each group because of unequal difficulty of the post-test and end-of-year test syndrome. The above results were statistically significant at the .001 level. The studies also showed PRISMS students to have more positive attitudes toward learning physics.
The participants were given a survey at the end of their first year of teaching PRISMS to compare teacher observed traits of the students with their observations of previous years. The teachers indicated they conducted more laboratory activities, especially exploratory activities, and were less dependent on the text. They also concluded that the students in the current year related physics more to everyday experiences, had better attitudes toward learning physics, were more highly stimulated to cultivate independent and critical thinking skills and depended less on memorizing formulas. The quality of the student-teacher and student-student interactions were also observed to be of higher quality than in the previous years.
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Last Modified 1/15/97