An international survey of geoscience education has been carried out jointly by UNESCO and the International Geoscience Education Organisation (IGEO) to address the question of 'How does school-level Earth science education compare across the globe? The survey gathered data from experts in 51 countries, comprising more than half the global…

Although U.S. high school students' access to Earth and space science (ESS) varies widely from state to state, nationally, ESS content is the most neglected area of science education and scientific literacy. States have been considering whether they will formally adopt, or less formally adapt, the new national science education standards, the Next…

Surveys of the earth science content of all secondary (high school) science textbooks and related publications used in England and Wales have revealed high levels of error/misconception. The 29 science textbooks or textbook series surveyed (51 texts in all) showed poor coverage of National Curriculum earth science and contained a mean level of one…

This case study analyzes five science courses of a United States virtual charter school. Online quizzes and exams are provided by the corporate partner, while local teachers have selected report topics, virtual labs and at-home labs for students to complete. These assessments were coded for their correlation to the cognitive levels of the revised…

The work aims to improve the assessment of creative problem-solving in science education by employing language technologies and computational-statistical machine learning methods to grade students' natural language responses automatically. To evaluate constructs like creative problem-solving with validity, open-ended questions that elicit…

Investigated the learning by eighth-grade students of the concept of crustal evolution, asking questions that deal with how time-efficient procedures can be devised that measure concept learning effectively and whether these procedures yield valid information on the learning of a science concept. (CS)

Describes the purpose and possible uses of the new American Geological Institute/National Science Teachers Association Earth Science Examination. Provides an order blank for obtaining the test. Stresses that the test is specifically designed to test concepts and problem-solving ability. (CW)

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.…

This document presents a two-part study. In the first part, open-ended questions based on interview studies were administered via paper-and-pencil tasks to 76 sixth and eighth grade students. In the second part, the earth and sun relationship questions were extracted, modified, and given to 178 seventh grade students. In part one, the performance…

CONTAINED ARE QUESTIONS AND TESTS TO EVALUATE ACHIEVEMENT IN KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE THIRD LEVEL COURSE IN SCIENCE FOR THE HIGHER SCHOOL CERTIFICATE IN NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA. THE QUESTIONS ARE BASED ON THE OFFICIAL SYLLABUS OF THE BOARD OF SENIOR SCHOOL STUDIES. THE QUESTIONS REFLECT THE LEVELS OF UNDERSTANDING AS DEVELOPED BY…

This document was developed to provide eighth-grade teachers in New York City with a sequence of instructional activities in science. The major portion of the guide is divided into four instructional units. The first unit, "Chemistry," includes lessons and activities on liquid solutions, suspensions and emulsions, acids, bases,…

This 35-item, multiple-choice Marine Education Knowledge Inventory was developed for use in upper elementary/middle schools to measure a student's knowledge of marine science. Content of test items is drawn from oceanography, ecology, earth science, navigation, and the biological sciences (focusing on marine animals). Steps in the construction of…

The Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) Grade 11 Test is designed to measure proficiency in four subject areas including English, mathematics, social studies, and science. This guide for science is intended to provide a description of the way in which specific skill areas are assessed on the LEAP test and instructional considerations…

The Australian Science Item Bank consists of three volumes of multiple-choice questions. Book 2 contains questions on Earth Sciences and Chemistry. The questions are designed to be suitable for high school students (year 8 to year 12 in Australian schools). The questions are classified by the subject content of the question, the cognitive skills…