Chemistry critical friendships: investigating chemistry-specific discourse within a domain-general discussion of best practices for inquiry assessments

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 452-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam G. L. Schafer ◽  
Ellen J. Yezierski

High school chemistry teachers struggle to use assessment results to inform instruction. In the absence of expert assistance, teachers often look to their peers for guidance and support; however, little is known about the assessment beliefs and practices of high school chemistry teachers or the discourse mechanisms used as teachers support one another. Presented in this paper are the results from analyzing a discussion between five high school chemistry teachers as they generated a set of best practices for inquiry assessments. To analyze the discussion, a novel representation called a discourse map was generated to align the analyses conducted on chemistry teacher discourse as they temporally occurred. Results show the utility of the discourse map for evidencing critical friendship and assessment practices evoked by the teachers during the discussion of best practices. Implications for the structural considerations of materials and chemistry teacher professional development are presented as well as potential future investigations of teacher discourse regarding the use of data to inform instruction.

Author(s):  
Adam G. L. Schafer ◽  
Ellen J. Yezierski

Designing high school chemistry assessments is a complex and difficult task. Although prior studies about assessment have offered teachers guidelines and standards as support to generate quality assessment items, little is known about how teachers engage these supports or enact their own beliefs into practice while developing assessments. Presented in this paper are the results from analyzing discourse among five high school chemistry teachers during an assessment item generation activity, including assessment items produced throughout the activity. Results include a detailed description of the role of knowledge bases embedded within high school chemistry teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and the processes used to enact these knowledge bases during planned formative assessment design. Implications for chemistry teacher professional development are posited in light of the findings as well as potential future investigations of high school chemistry teacher generation of assessment items.


Author(s):  
Adam G. L. Schafer ◽  
Victoria M. Borland ◽  
Ellen J. Yezierski

Even when chemistry teachers’ beliefs about assessment design align with literature-cited best practices, barriers can prevent teachers from enacting those beliefs when developing day-to-day assessments. In this paper, the relationship between high school chemistry teachers’ self-generated “best practices” for developing formative assessments and the assessments they implement in their courses are examined. Results from a detailed evaluation of several high school chemistry formative assessments, learning goals, and learning activities reveal that assessment items are often developed to require well-articulated tasks but lack either alignment regarding representational level or employ only one representational level for nearly all assessment items. Implications for the development of a chemistry-specific method for evaluating alignment are presented as well as implications for high school chemistry assessment design.


2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Harshman ◽  
Ellen Yezierski

Data-driven inquiry (DDI) is the process by which teachers design and implement classroom assessments and use student results to inform/adjust teaching. Although much has been written about DDI, few details exist about how teachers conduct this process on a day-to-day basis in any specific subject area, let alone chemistry. Nineteen high school chemistry teachers participated in semi-structured interviews regarding how they used assessments to inform teaching. Results are reported for each step in the DDI process. Goals – there was a lack in specificity of learning and instructional goals and goals stated were not conducive to informing instruction. Evidence – at least once, all teachers determined student learning based solely on scores and/or subscores, suggesting an over-reliance on these measures. Conclusions – many teachers claimed that students either did or did not “understand” a topic, but the teachers did not adequately describe what this means. Actions – very few teachers listed a specific action as a result of analyzing student data, while the majority gave multiple broad pedagogical strategies to address content deficiencies. The results of this study show the limitations of teachers' DDI practices and inform how professional development on DDI should have a finer grain size and be based in disciplinary content.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Sumiyati Sumiyati

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between creativity with high school chemistry teacher performance in Jabodetabek in 2016. The design of this study is a survey with correlation approach. The sample size was 118 high school chemistry teachers selected by simple random sampling. The research instrument used are (1) the scale of teacher chemistry performance, and (2) creativity scale. Data were analyzed by using simple regression correlation and multiple regression correlation. The findings of this study indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between creativity with high school chemistry teacher performance.Keywords: teacher, performance, creativity, relationship ABSTRAK Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui hubungan antara kreativitas dengan kinerja guru kimia SMA di Jabodetabek pada tahun 2016. Adapun desain penelitian ini adalah survey dengan pendekatan korelasi. Jumlah sampel adalah 118 orang guru kimia SMA di pilih dengan cara sampling acak sederhana. Instrumen penelitian yang digunakan yaitu (1) skala kinerja guru kimia, dan (2) skala kreativitas. Data dianalisis dengan menggunakan korelasi regresi sederhana dan korelasi regresi ganda. Adapun temuan dari penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa terdapat hubungan positif yang signifikan antara kreativitas dengan kinerja guru kimia SMA.Kata kunci: guru, kinerja, kreatifitas, hubungan


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