Rhetoric and reality: Congruence between the knowledge and practice of assessment of the classroom science teacher and the reform initiative of the National Science Education Standards

The purpose of this research was to investigate the areas of agreement and disagreement between the educational practice of assessment and the policies surrounding assessment that is articulated in the science education reform initiative of the national standards. Assessment in the science classroom is a complex process by which the teacher gathers information needed for educational decisions. The reform initiative in the National Research Council (1996) National Science Education Standards provides the vision of assessment that science educators have determined to support and guide the development of mechanisms that provide assessment information to all of the levels of the educational system. This study was designed to inform the consonance and inconsonance of assessment policy and practice through a case study of the teacher and a document analysis of the national standards. The case study focused on the knowledge and practice of a single, well-experienced high school chemistry teacher. Observations of classroom practice, interviews and analysis of assessment tasks informed the picture of what she knew about assessment and the practices of assessment she carried out in her classroom. The National Research Council standards document was analyzed to determine the key elements of assessment that were then organized into an analytic framework. The framework provided the lens to examine the classroom teacher\u27s assessment knowledge and practice. The chemistry teacher\u27s assessment practice was rich and complex. She used assessment tasks to inform multiple decisions in her classroom. She designed, implemented and analyzed student data from tasks that were closely connected to her instructional practices. Her assessment practice did not reflect many of the traditional elements of quality in assessment, and her perceptions of validity, reliability, and equity were idiosyncratic. She struggled with several important issues of assessment design, including measuring student reasoning. The teacher\u27s practice matched numerous elements of the standards for assessment including articulating the purpose of assessment, engaging students in self-assessment, and assessing important goals in school science. The teacher\u27s practice did not match the expectations for quality in assessment contained in the standards. However, the standards themselves do not clearly define what is meant by quality in assessment