The Assessment of Science Learning in Schools in Hong Kong: the status quo and future directions

Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 1, Issue 2, Article 2 (Dec., 2000)
CHENG May Hung, May; SO Wing Mui, Winnie; CHEUNG Wing Ming, Francis
The Assessment of Science Learning in Schools in Hong Kong: the status quo and future directions

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Current trends in science assessment
Two major forms of assessment, formative and summative assessment, are commonly employed by teachers. Bloom, Hastings and Madhaus (1971) defined "summative assessment" by including evaluation tests conducted at the end of units or course to judge the extent of students' learning. The purpose is to grade or certify students, evaluate their progress or to find out the effectiveness of a curriculum. This form of assessment mainly reflects students' school performance and may have important consequence on students' future. The term formative assessment is used to describe a number of different assessment activities. Formative assessment may include continuous or on-going summative assessment where a number of tests or tasks were given to students and the scores were accumulated to determine students' performance at the end of a course or year. This practice is regarded as a formative assessment for summative purpose. Another way of using the term formative assessment is referring to a variety of tasks that aim at promoting students' learning and informing teachers about their own teaching. Bell and Cowie (1997) defined the purpose of formative assessment in promoting student learning as:

"To give feedback as to whether the students had scientifically acceptable ideas and skills; to give legitimacy to the students' scientifically acceptable ideas; to monitor whether the learning activities were working; to monitor students' progress in learning; to give feedback on what is valued as learning outcome in the classroom; and to give feedback on the students' social and personal learning."

The gist of formative assessment is thus to improve students' learning and teachers need to take action after they collected information about students' learning through the assessment tasks. By this definition, "on-going summative" assessment can only be considered as formative assessment when teachers take action to improve learning. For example, after having learnt that a student has an alternative concept in science through an assessment task, the teacher may involve in providing opportunities for students to explore their own ideas, to present to them the scientific view, to modify their own ideas and to apply the new ideas confidently (Driver, 1989). Bell and Cowie (1997) further propose the planned and interactive formative assessment. The former involves tasks conducted at the beginning of teaching and aims at eliciting students' prior conceptions. The teacher will then need to interpret and act on the formative assessment information. The latter or interactive formative assessment refers to interactions between students and the teacher during teaching or practical activities. Teachers in Hong Kong are long adapted to the use of tests and examinations for summative purposes, the awareness of formative assessment is only beginning to grow. To be congruent with this situation, the definition of formative assessment is extended to include all different possibilities: tasks which may be used for on-going summative purpose but are directed to improve students' learning as well as planned and interactive formative assessment. The purpose of formative assessment is twofold: improve students' learning as well as teaching.

The advantages of formative assessment are further elaborated by a number of science educators. Daws and Singh (1996) summarize that formative assessment strategies can deepen learning by encouraging pupils to:

Reflect on their learning in a structured and systematic fashion;
Discuss their progress with their teachers and focus on what they need to do to improve;
Develop greater confidence in their knowledge of science.

Apart from this, Black (1998a) reviewed the evidences that support the effectiveness of formative assessment. He concluded based on at least 20 studies that formative assessment helps the "low attainers" in improving their learning whilst raising the overall level of achievement. He also found a number of common characteristics among the research reports. These include: the involvement of new modes of pedagogy that calls for significant changes in classroom practices; the active involvement of pupils in the assessment process; the results of the assessment practices have to be used in adjustment of teaching and learning strategies; formative assessment can affect the motivation and self-esteem of pupils with obvious benefits in engaging pupils in self-assessment.

Having identified the advantages of formative assessment, it is not surprising that in science education, the form of assessment has been shifted from the dominant paper tests to the use of other varieties including diagram drawing and experimental operations. The once prevailing summative assessment strategies have been replaced by such diversified alternatives as formative assessments. The aim of assessment becomes multi-purpose instead of giving only a summation on students' performance (Lloyd-Jones, 1986). The traditional one-off summative science assessment aims at assessing students' understanding on facts and theories, but now teaching objectives, learning processes, nature of scientific knowledge and its relation to the society become the prior aims. According to Lloyd-Jones (1986), assessments have also lifted from low level cognitive domain to high level cognitive domains covering analytical ability, ability of appreciation and sense of creativity, the affective domain like attitude, interests and value; as well as the skills domain. To help teachers to conduct formative assessments that cover the various domains, standardized tests and a variety of students' works are suggested in the literature.