The history and evolution of science assessment remains poorly known, especially in the context of the exam question contents. Here we analyze the Finnish matriculation examination in biology from the 1920s to 1960s to understand how the exam has evolved in both its knowledge content and educational form. Each question was classified according to…

General chemistry courses are often the foundation for the study of other science disciplines and upper-level chemistry concepts. Students who take introductory chemistry courses are more often from health and science-related fields than chemistry. As such, the content taught and assessed in general chemistry courses is envisioned as building…

Research on the test structure of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) has largely ignored gender, and research on FCI gender effects (often reported as "gender gaps") has seldom interrogated the structure of the test. These rarely crossed streams of research leave open the possibility that the FCI may not be structurally valid across…

Organic chemistry is often promoted as a course designed to cultivate skill in scientific "ways of thinking." Expert organic chemists perceive their field as one in which plausible answers to complex questions are arrived at through analytical thought processes. They draw analogy between problem solving in organic chemistry and diagnosis…

In recent years, large-scale international assessments have been increasingly used to evaluate and compare the quality of education across regions and countries. However, measurement variance between different versions of these assessments often posts threats to the validity of such cross-cultural comparisons. In this study, we investigated the…

One of the greatest assessment challenges is providing fair and valid tests for multilingual pupils. Since language proficiency impacts their results on content tests, accommodations are suggested to help in solving the validity issues. In this mixed methods study on multilingual assessment, pupils were divided according to three testing…

The Test Of Astronomy STandards (TOAST) is a comprehensive assessment instrument designed to measure students' general astronomy content knowledge. Built upon the research embedded within a generation of astronomy assessments designed to measure single concepts, the TOAST is appropriate to measure across an entire astronomy course. The TOAST's…

This study describes how criterion-referenced feedback was produced from English language, mathematics and natural sciences monitoring assessments. The assessments were designed for grades 8 to 11 to give an overall indication of curriculum-standards attained in a given subject over the course of a year (N = 1113). The Rasch Item Map method was…

Background: In 2011 the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) were conducted at fourth grade in a number of participating countries with a shared representative sample. In this article we investigate whether there are multidimensional proficiency patterns…

Validity evidence based on test content is of essential importance in educational testing. One source for such evidence is an alignment study, which helps evaluate the congruence between tested objectives and those specified in the curriculum. However, the results of an alignment study do not always sufficiently capture the degree to which a test…

Many of the instruments developed for research use by the chemistry education community are relatively new. Because psychometric evidence dictates the validity of interpretations made from test scores, gathering and reporting validity and reliability evidence is of utmost importance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate what…

We describe an innovative automated test construction algorithm for building aligned achievement tests. By incorporating the algorithm into the test construction process, along with other test construction procedures for building reliable and unbiased assessments, the result is much more valid tests than result from current test construction…

Current science assessments typically present a series of isolated fact-based questions, poorly representing the complexity of how real-world science is constructed. The National Research Council asserts that this needs to change to reflect a more authentic model of science practice. We strongly concur and suggest that good science assessments…

The theory of evolution, pioneered most famously by Charles Darwin, posits that humans and other living creatures have descended from common ancestors over time through a process of random mutation and natural selection. It is widely considered to be a pillar of modern biology. Over the past year, however, public education has been roiled by…

Studied content domain, format, and level of inquiry as factors contributing to the large variation in student performance across open-ended measures. Results for more than 1,200 eighth graders do not support the hypothesis that tasks similar in content, format, and level of inquiry would correlate higher with each other than with measures…