An electronic newsletter for the science education community
July/August 2008
Bridging Assessment Research and Practice
Project 2061 contributes to NSTA book on K–12 science assessment
Assessment is a central part of science education today, but understanding assessment's
many forms and purposes requires insights gleaned from multiple points of view. The teacher
in the classroom, the researcher focused on particular strategies, the developer of state-level
tests, the teacher educator looking at the relationship between professional development
and student achievement—the perspectives of these educators and others shape the
national dialogue on how assessment can best help students learn science.
Project 2061’s team of assessment researchers has once again added their voice
to this dialogue by contributing to a new collection of essays from NSTA
Press. Assessing Science Learning: Perspectives From Research and Practice tackles
the complexity of science assessment by foregrounding the need for conversation among
researchers and practitioners. The essays grew out of two conferences convened by NSTA
to help bring National Science Foundation-funded research findings about assessment to
a larger audience of practitioners. The book invites science teachers to reflect on their
own practice and to join the larger conversation.
Editors Janet Coffey and Carole Stearns call for expanding teachers’ participation
in assessment discussions at the state and locals levels, and in assessment research.
While researchers can offer approaches and frameworks for teachers to integrate into
their work, practitioners can shed light on classroom dynamics and on how they make decisions
as they juggle “competing priorities and purposes” (Coffey & Stearns,
2008, p. xii).
Project 2061’s chapter, “Assessment Linked to Science Learning Goals: Probing
Student Thinking Through Assessment,” introduces readers to a procedure for developing
assessment items. Project 2061’s procedure involves three stages: (1) clarifying
the targeted content standard, (2) designing assessment tasks that are precisely aligned
to the specific ideas in the targeted content standards, and (3) using data derived from
one-on-one interviewing and pilot-testing items with students to improve the items’ effectiveness.
Deputy Director George DeBoer and his team then detail how their pilot-testing of multiple-choice
items brings student voices into the assessment conversation.
Project 2061’s researchers describe how they gather data from interviews with
students and pilot tests of items in which students’ answer choices are compared
to the explanations they give for their answers. With the help of example items from
key topics (e.g., Atoms, Molecules, and States of Matter; Plate Tectonics; and Controlling
Variables), they show how they identify factors that affect how well a test item measures
what students know about a particular idea. Based on the results of the pilot testing,
the Project 2061 team revises the items and continues to refine them through national
field tests.
In keeping with the book’s theme of bridging research and practice, Project 2061’s
contribution to Assessing Science Learning also makes clear that high-quality
assessment items that are closely linked to the ideas in science standards can meet the
needs of teachers, test developers and test administrators, curriculum developers and
researchers, and parents and other members of the public.
Read the full chapter: Assessment
Linked to Science Learning Goals: Probing Student Thinking Through Assessment [PDF]
Learn more about Project 2061’s assessment
research and development.
For additional information or to purchase Assessing Science Learning: Perspectives
From Research and Practice, and other books from NSTA Press, visit the NSTA Science
Store at www.nsta.org/store.
# # #
For more information about Project 2061’s assessment work, please contact:
Principal Investigator: Dr. George
DeBoer, (202) 326-6624.
References
Coffey, J., & Stearns, C. (2008). Introduction. In J. Coffey,
R. Douglas, & C. Stearns (Eds.). Assessing science learning: Perspectives from research
and practice (pp. xi-xvi). Arlington, VA: NSTA Press.
DeBoer, G. E., Herrmann Abell, C., Gogos, A., Michiels,
A., Regan, T., & Wilson, P. (2008). Assessment linked to science learning goals: Probing
student thinking through assessment. In J. Coffey, R. Douglas, & C. Stearns (Eds.), Assessing
science learning: Perspectives from research and practice (pp. 231–252). Arlington,
VA: NSTA Press.
