Assessment

Fourth-Grade Students' Sensemaking during Multi-step Problem Solving

The purpose of this study was to investigate fourth-grade students’ sensemaking of a word problem. Sensemaking occurs when students connect their understanding of situations with existing knowledge. We investigated students’ sensemaking through inductive task analysis of their strategies and solutions to a problem that involved determining the difference between two quantities and number of groups within the task. This analysis provided useful themes about students’ strategy use across the sensemaking domains.

Author/Presenter

Gabriel Matney

Jonathan D.Bostic

Miranda Fox

Tiara Hicks

Toni May

Greg Stone

Year
2022
Short Description

The purpose of this study was to investigate fourth-grade students’ sensemaking of a word problem. Sensemaking occurs when students connect their understanding of situations with existing knowledge. We investigated students’ sensemaking through inductive task analysis of their strategies and solutions to a problem that involved determining the difference between two quantities and number of groups within the task.

Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Perceptions of Assessment Tasks that Measure Content Knowledge for Teaching about Matter

Developing knowledge about science instruction is critical for preservice teachers. This study explores how 79 elementary preservice teachers perceive the relevance and importance of assessment task scenarios designed to elicit information about content knowledge for teaching (CKT) about matter and its interactions—a foundational topic for teaching physical science.

Author/Presenter

Allison K. Bookbinder

Jamie N. Mikeska

Heena R. Lakhani

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2022
Short Description

This study explores how 79 elementary preservice teachers perceive the relevance and importance of assessment task scenarios designed to elicit information about content knowledge for teaching (CKT) about matter and its interactions—a foundational topic for teaching physical science.

Articulating a Transformative Approach for Designing Tasks that Measure Young Learners’ Developing Proficiencies in Integrated Science and Literacy

As early elementary classrooms shift to implementing Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) instruction, high-quality assessments are essential for providing teachers with information about where students are in the process of developing proficiency in science. In this paper, we introduce an approach for designing NGSS-aligned assessments that measure young learners’ science progress while also attending to the scientific language and literacy practices that are integral parts of the NGSS Performance Expectations.

Author/Presenter

Alison K. Billman

Daisy Rutstein

Christopher J. Harris

Year
2021
Short Description

This paper introduces an approach for designing NGSS-aligned assessments that measure young learners’ science progress while also attending to the scientific language and literacy practices that are integral parts of the NGSS Performance Expectations.

Articulating a Transformative Approach for Designing Tasks that Measure Young Learners’ Developing Proficiencies in Integrated Science and Literacy

As early elementary classrooms shift to implementing Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) instruction, high-quality assessments are essential for providing teachers with information about where students are in the process of developing proficiency in science. In this paper, we introduce an approach for designing NGSS-aligned assessments that measure young learners’ science progress while also attending to the scientific language and literacy practices that are integral parts of the NGSS Performance Expectations.

Author/Presenter

Alison K. Billman

Daisy Rutstein

Christopher J. Harris

Year
2021
Short Description

This paper introduces an approach for designing NGSS-aligned assessments that measure young learners’ science progress while also attending to the scientific language and literacy practices that are integral parts of the NGSS Performance Expectations.

Articulating a Transformative Approach for Designing Tasks that Measure Young Learners’ Developing Proficiencies in Integrated Science and Literacy

As early elementary classrooms shift to implementing Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) instruction, high-quality assessments are essential for providing teachers with information about where students are in the process of developing proficiency in science. In this paper, we introduce an approach for designing NGSS-aligned assessments that measure young learners’ science progress while also attending to the scientific language and literacy practices that are integral parts of the NGSS Performance Expectations.

Author/Presenter

Alison K. Billman

Daisy Rutstein

Christopher J. Harris

Year
2021
Short Description

This paper introduces an approach for designing NGSS-aligned assessments that measure young learners’ science progress while also attending to the scientific language and literacy practices that are integral parts of the NGSS Performance Expectations.

Developing and Piloting a Tool to Assess Culturally Responsive Principles in Schools Serving Indigenous Students

This article presents a tool and discusses the rationale for the authors’ development of a tool designed to assess the alignment of culturally responsive schooling principles within schools serving predominantly U.S. Indigenous students.
Author/Presenter

Angelina Castagno

Darold H. Joseph

Hosava Kretzmann

Pradeep M. Dass

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2021
Short Description

This article presents a tool and discusses the rationale for the authors’ development of a tool designed to assess the alignment of culturally responsive schooling principles within schools serving predominantly U.S. Indigenous students. Schools that serve a majority of Indigenous students are generally located on or bordering Native Nations that are federally recognized as being sovereign Nations with a government-to-government relationship to the federal government, so the more generic diversity, equity, and inclusion tools that currently exist are insufficient for the unique contexts of schools in Indian Country. Thus, we offer a tool that can be used to identify and strengthen the integration of culturally responsive principles specifically for, with, and in Indigenous-serving schools.

Resource(s)

A Framework of Construct-Irrelevant Variance for Contextualized Constructed Response Assessment

Estimating and monitoring the construct-irrelevant variance (CIV) is of significant importance to validity, especially for constructed response assessments with rich contextualized information. To examine CIV in contextualized constructed response assessments, we developed a framework including a model accounting for CIV and a measurement that could differentiate the CIV. Specifically, the model includes CIV due to three factors: the variability of assessment item scenarios, judging severity, and rater scoring sensitivity to the scenarios in tasks.

Author/Presenter

Xiaoming Zhai

Kevin C. Haudek

Christopher Wilson

Molly Stuhlsatz

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2021
Short Description

Estimating and monitoring the construct-irrelevant variance (CIV) is of significant importance to validity, especially for constructed response assessments with rich contextualized information. To examine CIV in contextualized constructed response assessments, we developed a framework including a model accounting for CIV and a measurement that could differentiate the CIV.

Resource(s)

Next Generation Science Assessment Tasks

Assessment tasks intended to support teaching and learning in classrooms that are enacting NGSS-aligned instruction, and to gain insights into grades 3-8 students’ progress in building proficiency with NGSS performance expectations (PEs).

Author/Presenter

The Next Generation Science Assessment Team

Year
2018
Short Description

Assessment tasks intended to support teaching and learning in classrooms that are enacting NGSS-aligned instruction, and to gain insights into grades 3-8 students’ progress in building proficiency with NGSS performance expectations (PEs). The tasks are designed to increase access and engagement for students with a range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, linguistic abilities, and learning differences.  The tasks include web-based tools to integrate computational models, which students can manipulate to explore phenomena, to generate data for a scientific argument, or to carry out an experiment. Teachers can select tasks to use with their students and assign them to be completed individually, in small groups, or during whole class instruction. As students complete the assessment tasks online, teachers can monitor student progress in real-time. The assessment portal links scoring rubrics to tasks to help teachers understand and evaluate which aspects of student work show progress toward mastery of the targeted 3-D integrated knowledge. Using these rubrics, teachers can provide online feedback to individual students.

Next Generation Science Assessment Tasks

Assessment tasks intended to support teaching and learning in classrooms that are enacting NGSS-aligned instruction, and to gain insights into grades 3-8 students’ progress in building proficiency with NGSS performance expectations (PEs).

Author/Presenter

The Next Generation Science Assessment Team

Year
2018
Short Description

Assessment tasks intended to support teaching and learning in classrooms that are enacting NGSS-aligned instruction, and to gain insights into grades 3-8 students’ progress in building proficiency with NGSS performance expectations (PEs). The tasks are designed to increase access and engagement for students with a range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, linguistic abilities, and learning differences.  The tasks include web-based tools to integrate computational models, which students can manipulate to explore phenomena, to generate data for a scientific argument, or to carry out an experiment. Teachers can select tasks to use with their students and assign them to be completed individually, in small groups, or during whole class instruction. As students complete the assessment tasks online, teachers can monitor student progress in real-time. The assessment portal links scoring rubrics to tasks to help teachers understand and evaluate which aspects of student work show progress toward mastery of the targeted 3-D integrated knowledge. Using these rubrics, teachers can provide online feedback to individual students.

Next Generation Science Assessment Tasks

Assessment tasks intended to support teaching and learning in classrooms that are enacting NGSS-aligned instruction, and to gain insights into grades 3-8 students’ progress in building proficiency with NGSS performance expectations (PEs).

Author/Presenter

The Next Generation Science Assessment Team

Year
2018
Short Description

Assessment tasks intended to support teaching and learning in classrooms that are enacting NGSS-aligned instruction, and to gain insights into grades 3-8 students’ progress in building proficiency with NGSS performance expectations (PEs). The tasks are designed to increase access and engagement for students with a range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, linguistic abilities, and learning differences.  The tasks include web-based tools to integrate computational models, which students can manipulate to explore phenomena, to generate data for a scientific argument, or to carry out an experiment. Teachers can select tasks to use with their students and assign them to be completed individually, in small groups, or during whole class instruction. As students complete the assessment tasks online, teachers can monitor student progress in real-time. The assessment portal links scoring rubrics to tasks to help teachers understand and evaluate which aspects of student work show progress toward mastery of the targeted 3-D integrated knowledge. Using these rubrics, teachers can provide online feedback to individual students.