Building Better Science Assessments
How can you know what your students really understand about the science content you’re teaching?
You and your students may sometimes think you’re agreeing about ideas when, at a deep level, you’re really not.
Identifying rudimentary or false conceptions beneath the surface of students' spoken or written statements, or a student's expressions (and even student performance) is tricky.
Informed by our research, we’ve developed formative assessments that place students' understanding of science into several learning progressions.
A learning progression is a sequence of levels of understanding of a specific topic or practice.
The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A100692 to University of California, Berkeley. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A160320 to University of California, Berkeley. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2010322. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.Special thanks to the teachers who provided feedback on the items and administered them to their students.