Argumentation is fundamental to science education, both as a prominent feature of scientific reasoning and as an effective mode of learning--a perspective reflected in contemporary frameworks and standards. The successful implementation of argumentation in school science, however, requires a paradigm shift in science assessment from the…

One of the core practices of science is constructing scientific explanations. However, numerous studies have shown that constructing scientific explanations poses significant challenges to students. Proper assessment of scientific explanations is costly and time-consuming, and teachers often do not have a clear definition of the educational goals…

Constructed response items can both measure the coherence of student ideas and serve as reflective experiences to strengthen instruction. We report on new automated scoring technologies that can reduce the cost and complexity of scoring constructed-response items. This study explored the accuracy of c-rater-ML, an automated scoring engine…

Advances in automated scoring technologies have the potential to support student learning during inquiry instruction by providing timely and adaptive guidance on individual students' responses. To identify which forms of automated guidance can be beneficial for inquiry learning, we compared reflective guidance to directive guidance for…

We present a new system for automated scoring of graph construction items that address complex science concepts, feature qualitative prompts, and support a range of possible solutions. This system utilizes analysis of spatial features (e.g., slope of a line) to evaluate potential student ideas represented within graphs. Student ideas are then…