Assessment of Standard Based Learning Outcomes in Science Education: Perspectives from the German Project ESNaS
The standing conference of German Ministers of Education released National Educational Standards (NES) to define expectations for regular learning outcomes at secondary schools for the three subjects of science: biology, chemistry, and physics. The NES in science explicitly focus on the development of students' competencies with respect to four areas of competence: use of content knowledge, achieving cognition, scientific communication, and evaluation and judgement. Within the project ESNaS (Evaluation of the National Educational Standards for Natural Sciences at the Lower Secondary Level) first, researchers developed a competence model to describe hierarchical levels of competence based on the formulated expectations, second, researchers and educators collabratively develop test items according to this competence model for the task development of a national assessment. 998 test items were administered in a validation study to 10 grade students from 160 schools in eight German federal states (N 6845) Data were analysed by one parameter Rasch analyses for estimating difficulty, fit, and discrimination. The validation study provides evidence for the hierarchical graduation of item difficulty with respect to complexity and cognitive processes of the test items. Data based on the validation study are presented here and future work and implications of the project are discussed.