Attention to core concepts in science and engineering in early education has grown recently, and understanding levers as force amplifiers can be recognized as one of these. Previous studies focused on two-sided levers and do not provide sufficient information about children's knowledge of levers as force amplifiers, nor about their learning and…

This article reports on the collaboration of six states to study how simulation-based science assessments can become transformative components of multi-level, balanced state science assessment systems. The project studied the psychometric quality, feasibility, and utility of simulation-based science assessments designed to serve formative purposes…

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is a comparative assessment of the achievement of students in many countries. In the present study, a rigorous independent evaluation was conducted of a representative sample of TIMSS science test items because item quality influences the validity of the scores used to inform…

The PISA assessment instruments for students' scientific literacy in 2000, 2003, and 2006 have each consisted of units made up of a real world context involving Science and Technology, about which students are asked a number of cognitive and affective questions. This article discusses a number of issues from this use of S&T contexts in PISA…

Croatian 1st-year and 3rd-year high-school students (N = 170) completed a conceptual physics test. Students were evaluated with regard to two physics topics: Newtonian dynamics and simple DC circuits. Students answered test items and also indicated their confidence in each answer. Rasch analysis facilitated the calculation of three linear…

Investigated are the reasons why eleventh-grade Israeli students intend to enroll for a biology, chemistry, or physics course. Topics, activities, motives, attitudes, and grades in the subjects in year 10 are used as predictor variables for correlational analysis. (YP)

Determined which of 10 rational thinking powers are measured by 12 commercially-available standardized science tests. One result reported is that 90 percent of the test items required only recall. The conclusion was drawn that the producers of standardized tests are not concerned with measuring student achievement of the rational powers.…