Keyword: assessment

ABSTRACT: Along with the trend emphasizing ID learning, ID assessments to measure students’ ID understanding have been developed by several scholars. The interdisciplinary science assessment for carbon cycling (ISACC) was developed to assess ID understanding among high school and college students in integrating knowledge from different science disciplines to explain a scientific phenomenon, global carbon cycling. The ISACC’s construct validity was checked using traditional item response theory (IRT) models in 2021. The current study was motivated by the desire to reveal the difference in IRT analysis results of the ISACC using a Bayesian approach in comparison with the results using the traditional approach. The Bayesian approach has several strengths over the traditional IRT. The results of the study imply the need for additional research for the development and validation of interdisciplinary science assessments through strong psychometric properties.

ABSTRACT: Several literature sources discuss the importance of nature of science (NOS) understanding and how having an understanding is central to being a scientifically literate citizen. As a result, developing NOS understanding is one of the most commonly stated objectives for science education. Acquiring views on NOS has been a prominent feature of research in this area since the 1960s. The following article provides a proof of concept for the transformation of a theoretical framework into a practical assessment tool (worksheet). The reconceptualized family resemblance approach to NOS is a theoretical framing of NOS which describes components of science in terms of categories subsumed under epistemic, cognitive and social systems. The aim is to explore its potential for use in science education and demonstrate its functionality so as to collect data on pre-service teachers’ understanding of NOS and substantiate what can be achieved through its application. The designed assessment tool has many purposes and in this case it was used in a pre-, post-, and delayed-post methodology to investigate pre-service teachers’ understanding of NOS following participation in NOS themed workshops. Implications for science teacher education will be discussed.

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this work is to evaluate the validity and reliability of life cycle assessment as a research methodology to measure the ecological footprint of New Zealand’s dairy production (by the dairy farming and dairy processing sectors). Environmental Input-Output Analysis was used as a macro-level life cycle assessment tool and applied to the dairy production over a period of six years. Eco-efficiencies were used as performance metrics to assess the sustainability of the dairy production. Over the six year period, New Zealand’s annual milk production increased from 11.4 to 15.1 million tonnes and its annual production of dairy products increased from 1.9 to 2.6 million tonnes. Eco-efficiencies indicate that over this time dairy farming became significantly more efficient in terms of land use (-27%), electricity use (-12%), water use (-21%) and lime use (-16%) and produced significantly less water-based effluent (-20%). At the same time fuel and fertilizer use were slightly less efficient (increasing by 2% and 6% respectively). The dairy processing industry used 21% less water and discharged 21% less effluent water. Fuel used in milk transportation was 14% more efficient. The internal validity of the research was good despite significant structural changes to the dairy processing sector but commercial sensitivity had a negative impact on the results. External validity was affected by different boundaries, different climates and different time frames for published studies but some comparisons were possible. The underlying data was generally accurate, reproducible and representative of the entire sectors with checks for anomalies to ensure good reliability.  The choice of Environmental Input-Output Analysis for the life cycle assessment tool and error analysis of all underlying data contributed to both the validity of the research method and the reliability of the data. These, in turn, give good credibility to the research findings.

ABSTRACT: This paper describes the measurement and outcomes of a novel teacher environmental literacy assessment. The Teacher Environmental Literacy Assessment (TELA) uses a contextual view of environmental literacy, and includes measures of Knowledge, Self-efficacy, Environmental Identity, Behavior, Issue Identification, and Strategy Selection. A sample of formal and nonformal educators and experts were selected to take and be interviewed about TELA responses. We found demographic differences, particularly between nonformal and formal educators. In addition, experts chose different types of strategies to address environmental issues than educators. The TELA can identify gaps in educator environmental literacy, which is vital content knowledge for educators.