The current study uses the Rasch Model to measure lower-secondary school students' critical thinking skills on photosynthesis topics. Critical thinking skills are considered essential in science education, but few valid and practical measurement instruments remain. The current study fills the gap by adapting the instrument from the Watson-Glaser…

This paper describes the design and evaluation of the Organic chemistry Representational Competence Assessment (ORCA). Grounded in Kozma and Russell's representational competence framework, the ORCA measures the learner's ability to "interpret," "translate," and "use" six commonly used representations of molecular…

Linking assessment and curriculum in science education, particularly within the topic of matter and its changes, is often taken for granted. Some of the fundamental elements of the assessment, such as the choice of wording and visual representations, as well as its relation to the curricular sequence, remain understudied. In addition, very few…

The study covers the development and testing of the alternative mechanics survey (AMS), a modified force concept inventory (FCI), which used automatically marked free-response questions. Data were collected over a period of three academic years from 611 participants who were taking physics classes at high school and university level. A total of…

In this study, we administered and evaluated circular motion concept question items with a view to developing an inventory suitable for the Ugandan context. Before administering the circular concept items, six physics experts and ten undergraduate physics students carried out the face and content validation. One hundred eighteen undergraduate…

System thinking in an important area of study across STEM and non-STEM disciplines. The Earth system approach that drives the geosciences and is essential to issues of sustainability makes system thinking a critical skill in geoscience education. A key area in understanding the development of system thinking skills in the geosciences relies on the…

The study determines the conceptual understanding levels of primary school students on the concept of light according to the Rasch Model with a Four-tier Light Conceptual Understanding Test (LCUT). The participants were 355 (164 girls and 191 boys) primary school students studying at a public school in Izmir city center. In the study, the Rasch…

During the pandemic, the use of question pools for online testing was recommended to mitigate cheating, exposing multitudes of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students across the globe to this practice. Yet instructors may be unfamiliar with the ways that seemingly small changes between questions in a pool can expose…

Biology education plays a vital role in nurturing the understanding of learners about the intricacy of life. Various efforts have emerged to strengthen learning biological concepts but there were still studies that showed that learners have low mastery in some aspects. To determine how well students understood various biological topics, including…

General chemistry students need to understand the concept of intermolecular forces and use them to predict the properties of materials. To do this, they must create symbolic representations of molecules, relate these to physical observations, and explain them using submicroscopic theoretical constructs. When these concepts are taught separately,…

Assessment of higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) provides few opportunities for students to develop more in-depth knowledge, serving students' ability to identify and solve their problems. One type of instrument for measuring HOTS objectively is the two-tier multiple-choice test (TTMCT). This research is part of the research and development…

We developed assessment tasks aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that require students to use argumentation and explanation practices along with disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts to make sense of energy-related phenomena. Scoring rubrics were created to evaluate students' ability to make accurate claims, cite…

Background: Chi and colleagues have argued that some of the most challenging engineering concepts exhibit properties of emergent systems. However, students often lack a mental framework, or schema, for understanding emergence. Slotta and Chi posited that helping students develop a schema for emergent systems, referred to as schema training, would…

We present the development and validation of a new assessment tool, the Moon Phases Concept Inventory for Middle School (MPCI-MS), a concept inventory about the phases of the moon targeting students aged 10 to 14 years old. Items in the questionnaire are based on a careful examination of the concept domain of phases of the moon, ideas and concepts…

The discovery and characterisation of planets orbiting distant stars has shed light on the origin of our own Solar System. It is important that college-level introductory astronomy students have a general understanding of the planet formation process before they are able to draw parallels between extrasolar systems and our own Solar System. In…