Toward a science performance assessment technology

Science performance assessments-assessments where students conduct hands-on investigations, and report and interpret their findings-have been used in large-scale testing programs for years and have recently entered into the international achievement arena. This paper argues that in light of the cost, logistic and administrative challenges of fielding these assessments, a performance assessment technology needs to be developed. Such a technology would provide tools for assessment construction and evaluation that would address these challenges. Here we report on our research that is working toward this goal, albeit without complete success. We present a conceptual framework for defining, generating and evaluating assessments. A SPA is defined by a task, a response demand, and a scoring system. We identify types of tasks/response demands (e.g., comparative-compare alternatives and reach a conclusion), link them to regularities in scoring systems that focus on the scientific validity of students' investigations, and evaluate the technical qualities of the assessments within the context of generalizability theory (reliability and validity). We summarize, conceptually and step-by-step, the development and evaluation process: providing concrete examples. We conclude that work remains to be done to determine whether a performance-assessment technology is a feasible goal. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.