Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is an important target of science teacher knowledge assessment. Most studies that have assessed the PCK across a large sample of science teachers used a text-based approach to elicit and assess the more declarative and static form of teachers' PCK. Recently, small-scale qualitative studies have adopted a novel…

As part of continued efforts to ensure inclusivity in assessment, OCR has developed a set of accessibility principles for question design in GCSE Science examinations, which has been applied since 2018. The principles are intended to help ensure that all students can demonstrate their knowledge, understanding and skills to the best of their…

Multiple-choice testing is a staple within the U.S. higher education system. From classroom assessments to standardized entrance exams such as the GRE, GMAT, or LSAT, test developers utilize a variety of validated and heuristic driven item-writing guidelines. One such guideline that has been given recent attention is to randomize the position of…

Bloom's taxonomy was adopted to create a subject-specific scoring tool for histology multiple-choice questions (MCQs). This Bloom's Taxonomy Histology Tool (BTHT) was used to analyze teacher- and student-generated quiz and examination questions from a graduate level histology course. Multiple-choice questions using histological images were…

Through a project funded by the National Science Foundation, Horizon Research has been developing assessment items for students (in the process, compiling item-writing principles from several sources and adding their own). In this article, the authors share what they have learned about writing items that reveal student understanding, including…