Intellectual Merit: The proposed project attempts to draw from several intellectual threads in science assessment to examine teachers classroom assessment beliefs and practices in the form of understanding their own (latent) interpretative framework for assessment.
In contrast to many models proposed in the tradition of formative assessment, this project stresses the central role of teachers interpretative frameworks in assessment practices. A series of studies will be conducted to reveal how teachers think about and implement assessment practices, to identify challenging aspects of classroom assessments, and to construct and validate measures to capture classroom practices. The specific objectives of the proposed research are to:
Conduct descriptive research to conceptualize, characterize, and document middle school science teachers understanding and beliefs about classroom assessment. Construct authentic scenario-based assessment tasks to capture the key aspects of teachers classroom assessment practices. Carry out reliability and validity research to validate the constructed tasks.
