State Testing and Inquiry-Based Science: Are They Complementary or Competing Reforms?

Abstract

The effect of district strategies for improving high-stakes test scores on science teachers' practice is explored in case studies of six middle schools in six Massachusetts districts. At each school, science teachers, curriculum coordinators, principals, and superintendents shared their strategies for raising scores, their attitudes towards the test, the changes that they were implementing in their curriculum and pedagogical approaches, and the effects that the test was having on staff and on students. Results from these case studies suggest that districts chose markedly different strategies for raising scores on high stakes tests, and that the approaches taken by districts influenced the nature of pedagogical and curriculum changes in the classroom. District strategies for raising scores that were complementary to the district's prior vision of science reform tended to cause less teacher resentment towards the test than strategies that departed from previously adopted goals. Differing effects on teachers in socio-

A multi‐user virtual environment for building and assessing higher order inquiry skills in science

“…For example, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) in the US recently issued a draft position statement recommending the use of science inquiry as a method to help students understand the processes and content of science (NSTA, 2004). This goal is problematic for teachers when juxtaposed with requirements of preparing students for the detailed science content included in high‐stakes testing; in many situations, this competing push forces the emphasis in science classrooms to change from inquiry‐based instruction to test preparation (Falk & Drayton, 2004). Curricula centred on both inquiry and coverage of state and national content standards would help teachers achieve both objectives.…”

Exploring the role of coherence in science teachers’ sensemaking of science‐specific formative assessment in professional development

“…Teachers can experience these differences as competing demands for their professional learning, which can have implications for the successful implementation of science education reform (Roehrig, Kruse, & Kern, ). For example, in secondary classrooms, teachers report a reduction in the amount of student engagement in projects, labs, and hands‐on activities, while increasing the amount of science content covered in a year to increase student test scores (Falk & Drayton, ). Similarly, school‐wide efforts led by the administration to better students’ writing abilities have dominated classroom science activity at the expense of more student‐directed inquiry (Settlage & Meadows, ; Taylor, Shepard, Kinner, & Rosenthal, ).…”

Large-scale assessments and their effects: The case of mid-stakes tests in Ontario

“…The use of student tests for accountability purposes to monitor and report on the performance of whole institutions and systems, as well as their teachers, has led to critiques of high stakes testing in books (Koretz 2017;Ravitch 2011;Sahlberg 2011;Kohn 2015;Zhao 2018;Hargreaves 2003;Hargreaves and Shirley 2012), peer reviewed journal articles (Booher-Jennings 2005;Braun 2015;Goldstein, 2001;Baker and Foote 2006;Baker et al 2013;Falk and Drayton 2004;Daly 2009;Darling Hammond 2004;Fuhrman and Elmore 2004), professional magazines and blogs (Rothstein 2014;Fullan 2011), the national statistical societies or associations of both the UK (Bird et al 2005) and US (American Statistical Association 2014), as well as the American Educational Research Association (2000).…”