The Application Of Performance Assessment In Science Inquiry In Junior High School Physics

Scientific inquiry instruction has become a new method of teaching in junior middle school physics class since the scientific inquiry was proposed as an important teaching content of Compulsory Education Physics Curriculum Standard (2011 Edition) in the new round of Basic Education Curriculum Reform. However, scientific inquiry has encountered many obstacles in practice, one of the reasons is the lack of suitable evaluation methods. At present, most of the teachers still use written test to evaluate students’ inquiry ability, this method is essential in the evaluation of students, but it also has many limitations and it’s not suitable for science inquiry ability evaluation. Therefore, we need to build an evaluation system to effectively promote the implementation of science inquiry in physics.As a new way of evaluation, performance assessment has received the attention of educational researchers and has become the main way of evaluating the ability of scientific inquiry in many countries because of emphasizing the evaluation of students’ behavior in the real or simulated realistic situations. Not only are the advantages of performance assessment consistent with the idea of the new round of Basic Education Curriculum Reform, they also meet the needs of science inquiry evaluation in physics. So the performance assessment should be an important method for the evaluation of scientific inquiry in physics. However, in our country, due to the lack of theoretical guidance and practical experience, the performance assessment is not widely carried out in scientific inquiry.This paper focuses on the application of performance assessment in junior high school science inquiry in physics, which is divided into four parts. The first chapter is the introduction, it introduces the research background, the current situation and the content and methods of this research. Chapter two is the summary of the theory, first elaborated the theoretical basis of the performance assessment, the definition and characteristics of performance assessment are summarized through analyzing related concepts, and then explains the necessity and feasibility of the evaluation of scientific inquiry. The third chapter provides the survey of the current situation, through the questionnaire survey of teachers and students, this paper casts light upon the current situation of the implementation of the evaluation of scientific inquiry, analysis the attribution of the results. The fourth chapter is the application of performance assessment in the process of scientific inquiry of physics in junior middle school, demonstrated the implementation of performance assessment of scientific inquiry in physics, and defined the objectives of evaluation, task types and evaluation tools of scientific inquiry. Then designed specific performance assessment case according to the program of the implementation, it turns out that performance assessment is better to evaluate the scientific inquiry ability, to improve the students’ interest in exploring, to standardize the student’s experimental operation, and to cultivate students’ ability of reflection.