Providing students with feedback on their performance is a critical part of enhancing student learning in chemistry and is often integrated into homework assignments, quizzes, and exams. However, not all feedback is created equal, and the type of feedback the student receives can dramatically alter the utility of the feedback to reinforce correct…

Background and Purpose: As a growing number of instructional units have been developed to promote young children's scientific and engineering practices (SEPs), understanding how to evaluate and assess children's SEPs is imperative. However, paper-and-pencil assessments would not be suitable for young children because of their limited reading and…

Many national science frameworks (e.g., Next Generation Science Standards) argue that developing mathematical modeling competencies is critical for students' deep understanding of science. However, science teachers may be unprepared to assess these competencies. We are addressing this need by developing virtual lab performance assessments that…

Student's ability to use and manipulate scientific concepts has been widely explored; however there is still a need to define the characteristics and nature of science ability. Also, the tests and performance scales that require minimal conceptual knowledge to measure this ability are relatively less common. The aim of this study was to develop an…

In August 2010, the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) received a grant of more than $25 million from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) program for a five-year study to validate its Leadership Assistance for Science Education Reform (LASER) model in three very diverse regions of the United States: rural North…

In August 2010, the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) received a grant of more than $25 million from the U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation (i3) program for a five-year study to validate its Leadership Assistance for Science Education Reform (LASER) model in three very diverse regions of the United States: rural North…

The study investigated the impact of item position in multiple-choice test on student performance at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) level in Ghana. The sample consisted of 810 Junior Secondary School (JSS) Form 3 students selected from 12 different schools. A quasi-experimental design was used. The instrument for the project…

Significant momentum exists for next-generation assessments to increasingly utilize technology to develop and deliver performance-based assessments. Many traditional challenges with this assessment approach still apply, including psychometric concerns related to performance-based tasks (PBTs), which include low reliability, efficiency of…

Education policy in the U.S. in the last two decades has emphasized large-scale assessment of students, with growing consequences for schools, teachers, and students. Given the high stakes of such tests, it is important to understand the relationships between students' answers to test items and their knowledge and skills in the tested content…

In this study, we analyzed the quality of students' written scientific explanations found in notebooks and explored the link between the quality of the explanations and students' learning. We propose an approach to systematically analyzing and scoring the quality of students' explanations based on three components: claim, evidence to support it,…

This study explored the use of multiple-choice item formats and performance formats for assessment of learning science at the second grade level. It was completed during a 2-week unit entitled "Living Systems" that addressed Virginia Standards of Learning for second grade science. A 7-day unit was designed and both multiple-choice and…

This research sought to examine the link between different situational demands, in this case three different types of science achievement tests (multiple-choice, constructed response, and performance assessments), and perceptions, beliefs, and performance of 491 high school students. The students were characterized by three well-established…

A recent study compared hands-on scientific inquiry assessment to assessments involving lab notebooks, computer simulations, short-answer paper-and-pencil problems, and multiple-choice questions. Creating high quality performance assessments is a costly, time-consuming process requiring considerable scientific and technological know-how. Improved…

The focus in this study was on science achievement measures and their relationships to three reasoning dimensions: basic knowledge and reasoning, spatial-mechanical reasoning, and quantitative science reasoning. Thirty multiple-choice items, 8 constructed response items, and 3 performance assessments, each nominally assigned to 1 of the reasoning…

Science process skills are described as a set of broadly transferable abilities, appropriate to all of the science disciplines and reflective of the true behavior of scientists. While science process skills have gained wide acceptance as an integral part of the science curricula, the development of valid and reliable instruments to assess those…