Analyzing the Role of Science Practices in ACS Exam Items

Note: This session is now closed. 

Recent efforts to reform K–12 science curricula, embedded within the NRC Framework for K–12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards, have focused on unifying core disciplinary content with crosscutting concepts that span across science disciplines and scientific practices. With these reforms comes the challenge of creating “three-dimensional” assessments that measure beyond basic content knowledge mastery to incorporate measures of science practices and crosscutting concepts. Adding measures of science practices to traditional forms of assessments may prove to be challenging. The work herein investigates how science practices have been inherently incorporated into previously released ACS exams through analysis and classification of ACS general chemistry exam items with a developed rubric. The findings may help to inform the creation of new assessment items that are more explicit in their incorporation of science practices by building upon the implicit incorporation of science practices already present in many of the items analyzed. By creating awareness of the presence of science practices in current assessment items, exam designers may have more ease sculpting items that encompass the three dimensions outlined in the NRC Framework.