Research On The Construction And Application Of The Evaluation Framework Of The Competence In Discipline Of Science (CDS) In The Stage Of Compulsory Education(Grades7-9)

Ever since a long time ago, science education has always attached great importance to cultivating and evaluating the students’competence. However, due to the vague understanding of the competence’s essence and specific performance, the cultivation and evaluation of the students’competence in discipline of science (CDS) in science education has no uniform objective standards and been in the exploratory stage. The ultimate goal of science education is to imporve students’scientific literacy, and the development of the students’CDS is defined as the core element and the major target of scientific literacy, which becomes the new focus of the research in science education:What is CDS? What is the structure of CDS? How to evaluate the students’CDS accurately? What is the development of the Junior Middle School students’CDS? How to evaluate the students’CDS in the Science Examination paper of High School Entrance Examination? How to help the students develop their CDS in the classrooms of the Junior Middle School? Based on competence in discipline of science, this thesis is divided into6chapters as follows:Chapter1is the overview of the research. The cultivation and evaluation of students’ competence is considered as the core of science education recently, which requires that we commit ourselves to improve the teaching efficiency in science classroom and evaluate the students’CDS accurately. Therefore, the researches on CDS are becoming the focus of science education. In retrospect to the domestic and foreign researches in science education and the major international scientific evaluation project, the research about cultivation and evaluation of the students’CDS from the discipline level is worth carrying out. In this study, based on revelation of the existing researches and our practical situation, we construct the evaluation framework for the students in the range of grades from7to9in the stage of compulsory education to explore the effective methods of training and evaluating the students’ CDS and provide some meaningful references for deepening the reform of the science curriculum in our country.Chapter2is the theoretical study. This section firstly expounds the meaning of ’competence’,’competence of discipline’,’competence in discipline of science’in turn. We consider the CDS is a stable psychological structure developing and formed in the process of students’ learning science knowledge and conducting scientific inquiry activities. According to the essential characteristics of science curriculum, contemporary science curriculum standards in some developed countries, the experience from the practical evaluation, and the existing research results, we define CDS in five learning areas:’scientific concept’,’scientific symbol’,’scientific model’,’scientific experiment’and’scientific calculation’. Guided by the theory of learning progression (LPs), we construct the evaluation framework for the students of grades from7to9in the stage of compulsory education, which support the development and refinement of the assessment instrument of CDS, the evaluation of the students’CDS and the final analysis and discussion of the findings and the applications based on the evaluation framework.Chapter3is the construction and optimization of the assessment instrument of CDS. In view of the evaluation framework for the students of grades from7to9in the stage of compulsory education constructed in Chapter2, the Rasch measurement model, the’Four Building Blocks’framework and the existing practical experience, we design the assessment instrument of CDS for the students of grades from7to9in the stage of compulsory education. The assessment instrument covers all the requirements of CDS in five learning areas, which are received two trial tests. In our study, we use Winsteps Version3.72.0model and analyze the data to test the validation of the assessment instrument, which shows the assessment instrument has good validation and verification and could be used for a large sample test appropriately.Chapter4is the evaluation of the Junior Middle School students’CDS. We conduct the large scale test in the areas of A and B simultaneously, the obtained data indicate that there are significant differences existing between grades, areas and genders in development of the students’ CDS. With the upgrading of the grade, the students’CDS is developing continuously, which results in the significant differences between each grade; there are also a certain difference between areas and genders. To a certain extent, there is a positive correlation between the development of CDS and the mathematics, physics or chemistry academic level of the students. Chapter5is an application of the evaluation framework for the students of grades from7to9in the stage of compulsory education. According to the evaluation framework, we analyze the assessment items of students’ CDS in the Science Examination paper of High School Entrance Examination. The results demonstrate that Science Examination paper of High School Entrance Examination pay a great attention to the CDS in the learning area of scientific concept and overemphasize the evaluation of the CDS in the learning area of scientific calculation; with the deepening of the curriculum reform, there is no remarkable difference of the evaluation of students’ CDS in the different periods; all kinds of the controlled works are greatly affected by the accouts of the Science Examination papper of High School Entrance Examination; which reflects knowledge-orientation evaluation is still dominated in the Science Examination in Junior Middle School.Chapter6is an another application of the evaluation framework for the students of grades from7to9in the stage of compulsory education. According to the evaluation framework, we analyze the practical instructions on students’ CDS supplied by their science teachers in the classrooms. The results demonstrate that the sicence tearchers also pay a great attention to the CDS in the learning area of scientific concept and ignore the importance of scientific model in students’ learning process; the scienece teacher overemphasize the basic CDS and neglect the integrated development of CDS; the science teachers prefer to choose the traditional methods of instruction, which results in that the students couldn’t well construct their knowledge structures and develop their CDS by themselves; which reflects knowledge-orientation instruction is still dominated in the science education in the range of grades from7to9in the stage of compulsory education.This study analyzes the essential and specific performance of the CDS from a more systematic discipline level, constructs the evaluation framework for the students of grades from7to9in the stage of compulsory education, evaluates the Junior Middle School students’ CDS in some areas of China, analyzes the assessment items of students’ CDS in the Science Examination paper of High School Entrance Examination and the instructions on students’ CDS supplied by their science teachers in the classrooms in the light of the evaluation framework, which provides certain valuable references for the cultivating and evaluating the students’CDS in the stage of compulsory education. However, this study is still in the stage of exploration and there are also some flaws in the respects of theoretical analysis, experimental design, how to experiment, and how to obtain the experimental results, which leads to the further research in the future.