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Exercise4

Exercise 4: Assessing Application of the Scientific Method

Consider a science assessment that attempts to measure the students ability to apply the scientific method. Assessing the application of the scientific method requires a domain of application, and it is difficult to envision a task that would not require both domain knowledge and knowledge of the scientific method.

What other kinds of tasks need to be on this assessment to be able to draw inferences about the examinee's ability to apply the scientific method?

RGA The key here is to look at subtraction. Although it is not possible to directly assess the scientific method application proficiency, direct assessments of domain knowledge are possible. Thus, if the assessment contains both direct assessments of the domain knowledge, and integrated tasks requiring both scientific method application skill and domain knowledge, it should be possible to get a reasonable picture of the scientific method skills of the examinee.

A difficulty arises when considering examinees that do not possess the domain knowledge skill. As lack of domain knowledge is an adequate explanation of their performance, the assessment will provide little additional information about the examinee's knowledge of the scientific method. On the other hand, this may not be an issue instructionally. The likely strategy for students with this problem would be to first remedy the domain knowledge deficit and then to tackle the scientific method.