ERIC Number: ED398056
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1996
Pages: 414
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: ISBN-0-8330-2367-5
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Performance Assessments in Science: Hands-On Tasks and Scoring Guides.
Stecher, Brian M.; Klein, Stephen P.
In 1992, RAND received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study the technical quality of performance assessments in science and to evaluate their feasibility for use in large-scale testing programs. The specific goals of the project were to assess the reliability and validity of hands-on science testing and to investigate the cost and practicality of these types of measures for large-scale assessment. The purpose of this monograph is to make the science tasks and scoring guides developed as part of the project available to other researchers and educational practitioners. This collection of measures is designed to provide researchers with a basic set of tasks they can build upon when studying student performance in science and investigating alternative approaches to science assessment. For this reason, information is reported about the conditions under which the tasks were administered and the reliability of the scoring guides (inter-reader correlations). The tasks should also be useful to practitioners in their discussions about measuring student performance in science, the types of activities that may be used in future state and national assessment systems, and the changes that need to take place in staff development. The document contains a complete description of each task used in the study, including the shell (or testing blueprint) from which the task was developed and copies or photos of the task booklet, the materials or apparatus that accompanied the task, the scoring guide, and the form used to record scores. The task topics studied include incline, force, friction, pendulum, lever, classification of animals, classification of materials, acids and bases--vinegar, acids and bases--alien, radiation, rate of cooling, heat, temperature, erosion and pollution. Contains nine tables and nine references. (Author/MVL)
Descriptors: Chemical Reactions, Classification, Elementary Secondary Education, Hands on Science, Heat, Mechanics (Physics), Science Tests
RAND, P.O. Box 2138, 1700 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138.
Publication Type: Tests/Questionnaires
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA.
Authoring Institution: Rand Corp., Santa Monica, CA. Inst. on Education and Training.
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A