Effectiveness of Flipped Classroom Instruction in Secondary Education
Research on flipped classroom instruction has substantially advanced in the past ten years. Flipped classroom refers to an instructional approach in which students study educational videos at home and do homework assignments in class. Since an increasing number of teachers wants to adopt the flipped classroom approach in their practice, further research—particularly in the context of secondary education—is clearly required. The two presented studies in this thesis aimed at examining the effectiveness of flipped classroom instruction in secondary education by conducting a meta-analytic synthesis of prior studies and an intervention study with a methodologically new approach. Specifically, the studies investigated whether and under which conditions the flipped classroom approach has a positive impact on student achievement and which learners benefit most from a flipped or video-based classroom. In the first study, meta-analytic methods were used to examine whether the flipped classroom approach, after controlling for sampling error, positively effects student achievement in secondary education. Effect sizes were calculated for the research designs pre-test-post-test (Time), post-test only (PostOnly) and pre-test-post-test with control group (Treatment). Moreover, the impact of four moderator variables as boundary conditions of flipped classroom effectiveness was estimated: disciplinary field, length of the intervention, use of a quiz and use of a learning management system. The meta-analytical findings for the effect size Treatment confirmed the effectiveness of flipped classroom on student achievement in comparison to traditional instruction (Cohen’s d = 0.42). Moderator analyses on the effect size Time showed stronger effects for subjects in the STEM area (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) than for foreign languages and humanities. The effect sizes were also higher for shorter intervention studies than for longer ones and if quiz at home had been left out. Moderator analyses on the effect sizes PostOnly and Treatment made clear that the effect sizes for intervention studies without a learning management system were higher than with a learning management system. The second study aimed to compare flipped classroom with other forms of video-based instruction and determine which types of students benefit most from video-based instruction. Thirty-eight school classes with 848 ninth-grade students took part in a quasi-experimental pre-post-test intervention study over the course of four weeks. Two independent variables were completely crossed resulting in four experimental conditions: video (at home vs. in class) and instructional method (student-centred vs. teacher-centred). Multilevel analyses revealed that all four experimental conditions were equally effective in promoting students’ learning gains. At-risk, average and excellent students profited least from video-based instruction. Confident and independent students had the highest learning gains from pre- to post-test. The study constitutes a first step towards a comprehensive evaluation of flipped classroom by using a better-controlled research design and may contribute to a more objective discussion about the positive effects of flipped classroom.
flipped classroom, effectiveness, student achievement, secondary education, meta-analysis
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