Abstract:

In 2012, the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) published the Framework for K-12 Science Education that articulated a three-dimensional vision of science learning, arguing that students should engage in scientific practices and apply crosscutting concepts as students learn disciplinary core ideas. In addition, the Framework emphasizes that student opportunities around this ‘three-dimensional’ learning should promote equity by broadening the participation of students historically marginalized in science. Since 2012, 44 of the 50 American states have adopted science education standards based on the Framework. As a consequence, educational practitioners, science education leaders, and educational researchers have grappled with the implications of the Framework for the design and enactment of classroom instruction, including classroom assessments that can be engaged in by teachers and students during ongoing instruction to help students evaluate students’ progress in attaining science proficiency. Designing and enacting three-dimensional classroom assessments that are valid and instructionally informative and that also promote equity and fairness has become one of the most challenging issues in the student assessment field.

In this presentation we will discuss how we have designed and validated a model for developing classroom-based assessments that align with the vision of proficiency embedded in the NRC Framework, assessments that can be used to promote students’ knowledge-in-use to make sense of everyday phenomena. The assessments require integration of the NRC Framework’s three dimensions of science proficiency – disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts and scientific practices.

Our evidence centered design process emphasizes the evidentiary base for specifying coherent, logical relationships among the:
(1) learning goals that comprise the constructs to be measured (i.e., the claims we want to make about what students know and can do);
(2) evidence in the form of observations, behaviors, or performances that should show the target constructs; and
(3) features of tasks or situations that should elicit those behaviors or performances.

We have created over 200 assessment tasks for use in elementary (3-5) middle school (6-8) classrooms. They can be found at the Next Generation Science Assessment portal - https://ngss-assessment.portal.concord.org. Our tasks are technology-enhanced (e.g., use of simulation, modeling software, video) and many use non-textual representations to elicit student responses (e.g., through drawing or modeling). Over 100,000 teachers and students have visited our assessment portal and used the tasks. We have also conducted studies to ensure validity, reliability and utility of the tasks and scoring rubrics including classroom observations of task use. We will provide examples of the types of tasks developed and some portraits of teachers’ enactments of these assessments for formative use in elementary and middle school science classrooms. The latter highlights various possibilities for integrating formative use of assessments with instruction. We will conclude this talk by offering implications of this work for research on supporting teachers’ assessment practices together with design and use of instructionally informative assessments.

Keywords:

Science, assessment, three-dimensional, validity, classroom, teachers.