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Assessment_Guide_For_Educators_Science (Page 36)
36 Assessment Guide for Educators: Science Appendix A What’s different on the Current Science T est? Many of the science reasoning skills that were assessed on the 2002 test continue to be assessed on the current test. However, in the current Science Practices, these skills are articulated in greater detail and with greater focus. The current Science Practices focus on test-takers’ ability to glean information from scientific texts, reason with data representations and statistics, and apply key scientific models, theories and processes. The intent of the Science Practices is to provide clearer and more specific information to both test developers and educators about the skills that will be assessed. Similarly, the content of the Current Science test continues to be drawn from the three major content domains of Physical Science, Life Science and Earth and Space Science. However, instead of the broad and open-ended categories that appeared in the 2002 content specifications, the Content Topics in the Current Science Assessment Targets are broken down into the Subtopics, which give much greater detail so as to narrow the scope of the content that is “fair game” for being featured in test questions. The content topics are also further filtered by the focusing themes. Content of each item must pertain to one of these two themes: • Human Health and Living Systems • Energy and Related Systems Test-takers should be broadly and generally familiar with each of the basic concepts enumerated in the Science Content Topics and Subtopics, and they should be able to recognize and understand, in context, each of the terms listed therein. Test-takers are not expected to have an in- depth and comprehensive knowledge of each subtopic. Rather, the stimuli about which each question pertains will provide necessary details about scientific figures, formulas, and other key principles. For example, a question may include answer options and stimuli that contain specific terms drawn from the content subtopics; however, test-takers will never be asked to formulate their own definition a term without the item providing sufficient contextual support for such a task. For more information on the science content topics and subtopics and the focusing themes, see the Science Assessment Targets in Chapter 1 .