Recent instructional reforms in science education bring a new vision that aims to move science teaching away from a focus on discrete facts covered at a superficial level to a focus on a smaller number of disciplinary core ideas that can be explored in depth. The success of these reforms depends on the instructional quality in science classrooms. Our goal in this paper is to introduce an instructional quality assessment tool that can provide a window into the extent to which students learn science through rigorous opportunities as envisioned in these reforms. We present the conceptual grounding of the tool and its development process with findings from a pilot test. Data collection involved in‐class assignments, students' work, and video‐records from nine science teachers' classrooms at a local school. The analysis revealed that the instructional quality assessment tool can reliably capture the variation in rigor in science classrooms. Specifically, the tool has the potential to assess elements of ambitious science teaching focusing on the rigor of tasks and talk that shape students' high‐level thinking and sensemaking in science classrooms. The article concludes by discussing future directions for the further development of this tool and the ways in which it can be used for instructional improvement and teacher learning.
Large-scale international assessment studies such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) or Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) provide researchers and policy makers the opportunity to conduct secondary analyses to answer questions related to educational outcomes and compare the impact of certain inputs on student outcomes across countries. These comparisons are made under the assumption that the questionnaire items translated to different languages are understood in the same way by its participants. Presenting a case from Turkey, this paper shows that equivalency of questionnaire items is not always achieved. The case explores demographic information related to teacher preparation and the sample is drawn from eighth grade science and mathematics teachers participated in TIMSS 2007, 2011, and 2015 in Turkey. Descriptive analysis of data collected from these teachers and comparisons across subjects and years show that teachers may have misunderstood a question regarding their major, thus limiting potential claims related to teacher preparation in Turkey. Researchers and policy analyst who use secondary data collected by international assessment studies should be aware of such comparability issues in adapted items prior to conducting any secondary analyses.
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