Research On Measurement And Assessment Of The Competence In Discipline Of Chemistry

The ultimate goal of our education is promoting students' self-development, and the development of students' competence is defined as the core element and major target of the education. Although great efforts have been made in cultivating students' competence, and the college entrance examination has been transformed from knowledge-orientation to competence-orientation as well, challenges may still arise due to the inadequate research on assessment of the competence in discipline of chemistry (CDC). On the one hand, while people clame that they develope students' CDC, they do not carry out in-depth practice, on the other hand, the serious subjectivity and randomness lead to aimless assessment of CCDC. The situation brings about the following questions:How to define the CDC? What are components of the CDC? How to develop CDC? How to evaluate CDC? These questions formed the basis for this study, which is divided into5chapters as follows.The first chapter, based on a review of literature at home and abroad, was conducted to establish the theoretical foundation of the study. The theoretical underpinnings presented two aspects:1. How to establish the components of CDC?2. How to identify the level of CDC? In general, the logistic analysis and factor analysis are the major methods of constructing the components of CDC. As the topic of CDC is an extensive aspect of the nature of discipline of chemistry, we analyzed the components of CDC in the way of logistic analysis. We hold that there are two ways of defining the levels of CDC, one is the two-dimensional framework using knowledge and its cognitive levels (e.g. Bloom's Taxonomy of educational objectives), and the other framework is taking competence as the "longitude" and the complication of the variables in the CDC as the latitude"(e.g. PISA).In the second chapter, CDC was defined as"the competence that students acquire in the learning activities of chemistry curriculum" on the basis of elucidation of relevant conceptions and their relations, and CDC is a kind of special ability. Reviewing the common requirements of the CDC in various countries, we defined the core components of the CDC which consisted of "competence in representation of symbols","competence in experiments","model-based thinking competence" and "quantitative competence"In the third chapter, guided by the theory of learning progression, we analyzed the learning progression of the components of CDC and identified the performance and content knowledge of different levels of CDC based on the two ways of defining the levels of CDC, as well as in the consideration of the tradition of chemistry curriculum, the requirements of competence for grades in the curriculum standards, and the characteristics of students'thinking. The above mentioned analysis supported the development and refinement of the assessment instruments of CDC, the development and revisions of rubrics and analysis and discussion of the findings in empirical studies. Additionally, learning progression is a hypothesis and need to be verified by data.In the forth chapter, in the light of Rasch model and the Wilson'"Four Building Blooks" framework, we designed the procedures of the assessment instrument in the study. We developed four instrument to test students'"competence in representation of symbols","competence in experiments","model-based thinking competence"and "quantitative competence". Each instrument was received two trial tests. In this study, Bond&Fox Steps1.0.0was used to model and analyze the data, and to verify the validation of the instruments. The results demonstrated the good validation and verification of the instruments, and they were appropriate for testing students' CDC in large scale.In the fifth chapter, we conducted the large scale test to examine four students' core competencies in chemistry with the instruments. The obtained data further demonstrated the validation and verification of the instruments. The results indicated that there were significant differences between grades, genders and schools in CDC Specially, no significant differences of CDC between students in grade10and11, which suggested that students'CDC increased in a modest way. In contrast, the CDC of grade12was higher than students in both grade10and11. With respect to the gender, we found that the male's CDC was higher than female's CDC. The significant difference also existed among different levels of schools.Despite certain limitations, as an exploration, the study gained a series of valuable findings and conclusions. For example, it redefined the definition of the CDC and its components, created the analytical framework and evolution models of the CDC, developed the assessment instruments of the CDC and revealed the characteristics of students'CDC development. The further work will focus on the refined research on the learning progression of the competence in discipline, the improvement of the instruction of the competence in discipline, and learning performance of students with different levels of competence in discipline.