What We Know

Assessment may take several forms such as standardized tests, class discussions, independent reports or group projects. Assessments may be classified as pre-assessment, formative or summative, each serving a different purpose and measuring various aspects of student knowledge and learning. Assessments are tightly related to curriculum and instruction, so that a modification of one requires modifications of the others. Assessments provide information for adjusting lessons according to student outcomes.

What is assessment?

Assessment is a process of collecting evidence of what students know and can do. Administering a paper and pencil test at the end of a lesson to evaluate students provides one measure of student achievement. However, this approach does not capture the full potential that a comprehensive assessment process can provide teachers and students. A comprehensive assessment process can be used by teachers to assess student readiness for new content, measure student progress during a lesson, evaluate student learning and provide students self-evaluative strategies.

A comprehensive assessment process includes three types of assessments. They are implemented at different points in a lesson. Pre-assessment is used at the beginning of a lesson or unit to determine student needs and/or baseline levels of knowledge. Formative assessment is performed over the course of a lesson to determine student progress so that teachers can adjust instruction and students can reflect on their learning. Summative assessment is conducted at the end of a lesson to evaluate student learning and to promote teacher reflection on the effectiveness of the curriculum and instruction.

Traditional assessment is a form of summative assessment usually involving multiple-choice, true-false, short-answer or essay questions. Non-traditional assessments use additional approaches such as portfolios, performance-based evaluations, time-series design assessments, predict-and-explain assignments and concept mapping. These approaches provide more comprehensive measures of students’ cognitive abilities (Wright, 2001) and are often more successful in measuring the student’s ability to integrate concepts and perform specific skills.

How can assessment enhance student learning?

An important role for assessment is to help students understand how they learn so they may improve their own learning and thinking skills. David F. Treagust, Roberta Jacobowitz, James L. Gallagher and Joyce Parker (2001) studied an eighth-grade science class where assessments were non-traditional and embedded within instruction. Classrooms offering frequent opportunities for students to share knowledge develop an atmosphere of acceptance and encouragement rather than a culture of competition. The teacher studied by Treagust and his colleagues used data from various assessments and student products to determine and grade progress. Their study indicates that using several assessment formats, providing students with feedback, adjusting lessons to facilitate continual learning, using students’ current conceptions to introduce new information and creating a culture of assessment rather than one of testing enhances student understanding in science.

The use of non-traditional assessments including class discussions, production of booklets, and written responses to questions are particularly useful to help students reflect on their own learning. Students can focus and crystallize their ideas when assessment occurs as part of instruction. Treagust et al. found that student learning improves when assessments occur during the learning experience and when teachers provide a variety of opportunities for students to communicate their developing knowledge and understanding. The authors conclude that students learn better when teachers regularly assess understanding and adjust lessons in accordance with results.  Moreover, teacher questioning can bring out more of the students’ knowledge (or misconceptions) and be of great benefit in modifying later instruction. Emphasizing the importance of questioning in science, Krueger and Sutton (2001) concur that through thoughtful questioning to facilitate classroom discussion, teachers can immediately determine a student’s line of thinking, and can provide feedback and adjust instruction accordingly. 

David W. Johnson and Roger T. Johnson (1991) advocate both teaching and assessing students in cooperative groups. Teachers can learn much about what students know by merely listening to them as they talk to one another.  Johnson and Johnson also recommend that individual tests be followed by group tests requiring students to discuss and reach consensus on their answers. In order to enhance learning, assessments must provide students with a variety of opportunities to demonstrate and express the depth of their understanding. Assessments that cover only basic knowledge do not reveal comprehensive learning and neglect the value of deep understanding.

The goal of science education is to develop capable problem-solvers who can view the world critically with an understanding of the processes of science.  Simply assessing student knowledge through memorization tasks does not improve student learning. Students who are good at recalling facts but lack a clear understanding of concepts may still earn high grades on recall examinations.  A study by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA, 1993) on the use of textbook tests indicates that few assessment questions demand higher-level thinking skills or the application of conceptual knowledge. In contrast, Ann Greenlaw Moffat and Ryan Schmidt (2001) describe one teacher’s non-traditional assessment requiring high school physics students to design and teach a physics lesson to elementary students. In preparing to teach others, the students were forced to move from an equation-based understanding to a deeper, conceptual one.

Real-world experiences and opportunities to perform science as a scientist enhance student learning in science. Teachers’ use of performance-based assessment to measure student skills, attitudes, problem-solving abilities and understanding of the nature of science may promote students’ positive feelings and interest toward the study of science and the laboratory. Assessments in which students are asked to make predictions based on information can be used to evaluate scientific inquiry skills. Once the student makes a prediction, new information can be presented, leading students to reevaluate and modify their predictions. Joan Boykoff Baron (1991) collected feedback from teachers who had used performance assessment in their classrooms in a two-year experiment. The teachers reported that the assessment had given them useful information for modifying their instruction. As a result of the increased feedback, the teachers focused more on the objectives of their lessons, learned more about the skills and interests of their students and increased the number of laboratory activities they presented to the students.

How can teachers employ assessment strategies?

Teachers can use assessment results to make informed decisions about student learning needs and how to teach the material to maximize learning. Teachers make three kinds of decisions when using assessment results: instructional placement decisions, formative evaluation decisions and diagnostic decisions. Instructional placement decisions address what a student knows and where he or she is in the instructional sequence, whereas formative evaluation decisions are based on information gathered while monitoring student learning during an instructional unit. Formative assessment looks at the level of student progress, the rate of progress being made and whether or not the lessons taught are effective or need to be modified. Diagnostic decisions are made when teachers analyze student progress so that remediation may be provided in the learning process. Fairness and consistency in results are considered to be vital aspects of any assessment (Wright). To maintain fairness and consistency, all forms of assessment should have clear objectives and a scoring rubric to guide both students and teachers (Tamir, Doran & Chye, 1992). Similarly, Krueger and Sutton recommend using rubrics, emphasizing the importance of students and a teacher having a clear idea of what is expected before beginning a project or an investigation.

When selecting assessment strategies as part of a science curriculum, it is important to first determine the purpose of the assessment and the decisions to be made as a result of the information gathered. Rodney L. Doran, Frances Lawrenz and Stanley Helgeson (1994) agree with Wright that assessments may measure intellectual ability, problem-solving skills, process skills, knowledge of facts and students’ interests and values, as well as the motor skills necessary to use laboratory equipment. Krueger and Sutton claim that assessments should determine both current knowledge and gains in understanding over time. The purpose for assessing and the decisions to be made also should align with the style and form of the assessment. Whether for pre-assessment, formative or summative use, the variety of assessment strategies provides students with multiple avenues for expressing knowledge and understanding and provides teachers information to guide student learning and instruction.

When assessment data indicate that student learning is insufficient, teachers need to modify instruction (Krueger and Sutton). Ruiz-Primo, Li and Shavelson (2002) investigated the effectiveness of studying students’ notebooks as a modified approach to performance assessment. The research team discovered that teachers provided minimal feedback to student entries and little or no modification of lessons occurred, even when it was obvious that students were confused. They concluded that when few intellectual demands are placed on students, followed by little feedback from teachers and minimal adjustment in lessons, little growth in understanding occurs. If teachers want formative assessment to enhance teaching, they must utilize information gathered from their students.

Using diverse assessment strategies can provide a more complete picture of student comprehension. Assessments can help teachers determine student progress and adjust lessons according to individual needs. When teachers continuously reflect on the information gained through assessments, they can more effectively modify their teaching methods and subsequent evaluation techniques resulting in enhanced student learning. Five examples that are illustrative of the diversity of the assessment process are described below:

• Portfolio assessments may include reflective journals, collections of laboratory reports or reviews of student investigations. These assessments may help illustrate student progress during an instructional unit or over a longer period of time.

• Performance-based assessments are considered to be more appropriate for use with inquiry-based scientific learning than are paper and pencil tests (Doran et al.). These assessments require the student to approach problems as a scientist while handling equipment and materials. Performance assessments require that students construct, rather than select, responses. Performance items allow teachers to observe student behavior on tasks. Scoring can reveal patterns in student learning and thinking. Whether used as a pre-assessment, formative or summative assessment, performance-based assessment can measure students’ scientific inquiry skills and content knowledge.

• Time series assessments help teachers track the development of student understanding throughout the duration of a lesson or unit. Students are asked the same question, individually or as a group, several times throughout a lesson. This design assists both students and teachers in identifying misconceptions and incomplete understandings. An advantage of this approach is that the teacher has several opportunities to analyze student learning, offering avenues for lesson modification and remediation prior to completion of the lesson or unit. This type of assessment offers data for evaluating both student learning and teaching effectiveness. This approach also fosters self-assessment, as students consider changes in their conceptions over time.

• Predict-and-explain assessments ask students to apply scientific principles and evidence. Students are given information, asked to predict potential outcomes and evaluate their predictions. The evaluative process may include student-designed experiments. This assessment provides opportunities for students to practice being scientists by analyzing and solving real-world problems. Predict-and-explain assessments often require students to repeat investigations to test hypotheses that were modified after initial experimentation (Liew & Treagust, 1998; Wright).

• Concept mapping is an illustrated representation of a student’s cognitive understanding, with labeled nodes indicating concepts and labeled lines between nodes indicating relationships among concepts (Ruiz-Primo & Shavelson, 1996). Concept maps are particularly useful as assessments because they can measure both factual knowledge and conceptual understanding (Novak & Gowin, 1984). Concept mapping can be used as a pre-assessment, formative or summative assessment. The level of student autonomy in design and construction of concept maps also can vary, depending on the purpose of the assessment. Concept mapping assessments that require students to create their own linking phrases between nodes may be more useful as formative assessments than are techniques in which the terms are provided (Yin, Vanides, Ruiz-Primo, Ayala & Shavelson, 2004). It may also be useful to conduct concept mapping in cooperative groups to facilitate formative assessment by the teacher and to encourage student self-assessment (Rice, Ryan & Samson, 1998).