Previous studies noted the scantiness of diagnostic instruments for the assessment of students' understanding of fundamental biochemistry concepts. Consequently, within this study, a four-tier test for the examination of secondary school students' conceptual understanding of amino acids, proteins, and enzymes has been developed. Items in the test…

This article reports an international initiative to develop and validate a "situational interest questionnaire" in three cultural/linguistic contexts: Canada (French), USA (English), and Taiwan (Chinese). The 20-item solution ([alpha] = 0.90) presented four factors: "enjoyment," "value," "attention/sustained…

This study developed and validated an assessment that measures interdisciplinary understanding using the topic of carbon cycling, the Interdisciplinary Science Assessment for Carbon Cycling (ISACC). This work was motivated by the need to assess interdisciplinary understanding, defined as the ability to solve problems requiring knowledge and skills…

Triggered by the pilot of the "Gao-Kao" reform, the avoidance of physics courses in senior high school has aroused the concern of society in China. The factors that influence the motivation to learn physics are an important research topic, especially for countries that have a disciplinary-based education tradition in secondary school.…

Students' science identity has been identified as an important construct that positively influences their learning engagement, persistence, and career intentions in science. This paper reported the process of developing and validating an instrument that can be used to assess high school students' science identity. The development of this…

This study developed and validated a scale of STEM project-based learning (PBL) experience, which comprises four dimensions: scientific inquiry, technological application, engineering design, and mathematical processing. The participants were 727 primary higher graders. Both within-network and between-network approaches were adopted to analyze the…

Growing interest in interdisciplinary (ID) understanding has led to the recent development of four ID assessments, none of which have previously been comprehensively validated. Sources of evidence for the validity of tests include construct validity, such as the internal structure of the test. ID tests may (and should) test both disciplinary (D)…

This paper describes the development, final design and validation of an instrument that measures a range of student interactions and satisfaction in undergraduate chemistry laboratories. Student surveys or conceptual and attitudinal instruments are widely used techniques for collecting relevant information on student learning. However, there is a…

Employers lament that science graduates, particularly engineering students, lack professional skills, despite increasing emphasis on teaching professional skills in their curriculum. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior as an overarching framework, one explanation for skill development gaps may be students' attitude towards learning professional…

This study focused on the development and validation of a three-tier multiple-choice diagnostic instrument about the ecological footprint. Each question in the three-tier test comprised by; (a) the content tier, assessing content knowledge; (b) the reason tier, assessing explanatory knowledge; and (c) the confidence tier that differentiates lack…

There is a clear need for valid and reliable instrumentation that measures teacher knowledge. However, the process of investigating and making a case for instrument validity is not a simple undertaking; rather, it is a complex endeavor. This paper presents the empirical case of one aspect of such an instrument validation effort. The particular…

This article describes the development and validation of an instrument that can be used to assess students' perceptions of their learning environment as a means of monitoring and guiding changes toward social constructivist learning environments. The study used a mixed-method approach with priority given to the quantitative data collection. During…

Identifying students' conceptual scientific understanding is difficult if the appropriate tools are not available for educators. Concept inventories have become a popular tool to assess student understanding; however, traditionally, they are multiple choice tests. International science education standard documents advocate that assessments…

This study described the process of developing and validating the College Chemistry Self-Efficacy Scale (CCSS) that can be used to assess college students' beliefs in their ability to perform essential tasks in chemistry. In the first phase, data collected from 363 college students provided evidence for the validity and reliability of the new…

The purpose of this article is to describe the development, validation and use of the "Constructivist Multimedia Learning Environment Survey" (CMLES). This questionnaire assesses teachers' and students' perceptions of the learning environment when students use online multimedia programs while teachers use constructivism as a referent for…