The Impact of Flipped Instruction on Middle School Mathematics Achievement

Abstract

The purpose of this causal comparative quantitative research study was to examine the effectiveness of flipped instruction on middle school mathematics achievement when compared to the traditional classroom. The effectiveness of the flipped classroom in closing the existing achievement gap among students of various ethnic sub-populations, socio-economic statuses, and in the instruction of students within pre-AP mathematics classes was investigated in this study. Propensity score matching was used to match students taught by the same teacher within control and treatment groups using 1:1 nearest neighbor matching with a caliper of 0.25 SD. The matched student data were analyzed using multilevel modeling facilitated by the mixed models linear program in SPSS. The results indicated that no statistically significant differences existed between the STAAR Mathematics scale scores of students within flipped or traditional classrooms. The researcher failed to reject the null hypotheses of no significant differences between scores of African American, Hispanic, White, Other, economically disadvantaged, non-economically disadvantaged, and pre-AP mathematics students in flipped or traditional classrooms.