The understanding of what makes a question difficult is a crucial concern in assessment. To study the difficulty of test questions, we focus on the case of PISA, which assesses to what degree 15-year-old students have acquired knowledge and skills essential for full participation in society. Our research question is to identify PISA science item…

Photosynthesis is the most important biochemical process on Earth. Most living beings depend on it directly or indirectly. Knowledge about photosynthesis enables us to understand how the world functions as an ecosystem and how photosynthesis acts as a bridge between the non-living and living worlds. It is, therefore, understandable that…

South Africa participated in TIMSS from 1995 to 2015. Over these two decades, some positive changes have been reported on the aggregated mathematics performance patterns of South African learners. This paper focuses on the achievement patterns of South Africa's high-performing Grade 9 learners (n = 3378) in comparison with similar subsamples of…

Understanding sources of performance bias in science assessment provides important insights into whether science curricula and/or assessments are valid representations of student abilities. Research investigating assessment bias due to factors such as instrument structure, participant characteristics, and item types are well documented across a…

Energy is a core concept in the teaching of science. Therefore, it is important to know how students' thinking about energy develops so that elementary, middle, and high school students can be appropriately supported in their understanding of energy. This study tests the validity of a proposed theoretical model of students' growth of understanding…

The purpose of this study is to develop scientific literacy evaluation instrument that tested its validity, reliability, and characteristics to measure the skill of student's scientific literacy used four scientific literacy, categories as follow:science as a body of knowledge (category A), science as a way of thinking (category B), science as a…

In this study, we investigated gender and minority achievement gaps on 8th-grade science items employing a multilevel item response methodology. Both gaps were wider on physics and earth science items than on biology and chemistry items. Larger gender gaps were found on items with specific topics favoring male students than other items, for…

Background: This study developed from observations of apparent achievement differences between male and female chemistry performances in a state university entrance examination. Male students performed more strongly than female students, especially in higher scores. Apart from the gender of the students, two other important factors that might…

Organic Chemistry is recognized as a course that presents many difficulties and conceptual challenges for students. To combat the high failure rates and poor student attitudes associated with this challenging course, we implemented a "flipped" model for the first-semester, large-enrollment, Organic Chemistry course. In this flipped…

Current reforms in the education policy of various countries are intended to produce a paradigm shift in the educational system towards an outcome orientation. After implementing educational standards as normative objectives, the development of test procedures that adequately reflect these targets and standards is a central problem. This paper…

Following the trend in science and engineering education generated by the visible impact created by the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), the investigator developed a Physics of Semiconductors Concept Inventory (PSCI). PSCI fills the need of standardized concept tests for undergraduate education in photonics and electrical engineering. The structure…

We have designed, developed, and validated a 25-question Genetics Concept Assessment (GCA) to test achievement of nine broad learning goals in majors and nonmajors undergraduate genetics courses. Written in everyday language with minimal jargon, the GCA is intended for use as a pre- and posttest to measure student learning gains. The assessment…

The purposes of this study were to: (1) examine whether or not the construction of concept maps by students improves their achievement and ability to solve higher order questions in chemistry, (2) investigate the differential effect of the treatment by gender and achievement level, and (3) explore the relationships between performance on concept…