迎向新課綱的挑戰：科學探究能力評量的標準設定與分析報表之研發

New curriculum guidelines of natural sciences in Taiwan have been implemented since 2019. One emphasis of the new guidelines is to develop students’ science inquiry abilities. However, so far relatively few assessments of inquiry abilities have been designed for Taiwanese teachers and educators to measure students’ ability levels and to evaluate the effectiveness of the inquiry-based curricula. There are urgent research and practical needs for valid assessments of inquiry abilities. During the past three years, this project achieved the following objectives in order to prepare teachers for the challenges of the new curriculum guidelines: (1) Developing an assessment framework aligned with the new curriculum guidelines, designing and administering a standard assessment; (2) Inviting experts to participate in the standard-setting process to establish and evaluate performance standards on the assessment of inquiry abilities; (3) Designing a reporting system for the assessment to generate reports of students’ inquiry abilities; and (4) Reprogramming the assessment system to become cross-platform. The system now can be used on computers, tablets, and smart phones under different operating systems so in the future we can promote the assessment and reporting system in schools, and support the implementation of the assessment in schools. This project will make contributions to evidence-based practice in schools as well as the assessment research in science education. By using the assessment reports, science teachers could easily identify individual students’ ability levels, adjust their instruction for individual students, and support students’ learning. Furthermore, this project will fill the research gap by presenting the process and validation of standard setting for a computer-based assessment of inquiry abilities.