The Application Of Performance Assessment In Middle School Physics Teaching

The new round of Basic Education Curriculum Reform requires to set up the new evaluation system that can promote the overall development of students and the continuous improvement of teachers. At the same time, the curriculum require practical evaluation and process evaluation in physics teaching. As a new evaluation tools, Performance Assessment got much attention by educational research and teachers,because it can promote the process evaluation. However, how performance evaluation applied in physics teaching evaluation? The main purpose of this reasearch is to survey and study the present situation of performance assessment in physics teaching, and then, design a implmentation program and evaluation standard about performance assessment at the operational level. The research of performance assessment in physics teaching, not only enriched the theoretical study of the existing evaluation methods in physics, but also provide a workable evaluation program for teachers to carry out the evaluation in order to promote students’development.The study mainly includes three aspects:First, the status quo investigation of performance assessment, including the teachers’and students’understanding of performance assessment at the present stage, its status of implementation and the existing problems in application. Second, the effective methods of performance assessment that can be used in physics experiment teaching. Third, effective methods of Socratic Seminar Assessment applied in physics classroom teaching. Through research, the following results are reached:1. Trough the survey and analysis of Performance Assessment in physics teaching, the following conclusion are drawn:(1) Secondary school teachers narrow the understanding of Performance Assessment at the present stage. They consider Performance Assessment as evaluations of classroom observation or daily performance, ignoring the Portfolio Assessment and Evaluation of physics experimental capabilities.(2) The main mode at present is written tests and regular assignments. Teachers seldom use a well-designed performance assessment program to evaluate students, even though, both teachers and students agree that the performance assessment is necessary.(3) The main evaluation content in physics teaching at present are the concepts and physical laws in physics, ignoring the evaluations of students’thinking processes, scientific researching abilities and their problem-solving abilities. This phenomenon may be due to the fact that at present physics teachers have no capabilities to design a scientific performance assessment program.(4) A considerable part of teachers can not design the process of performance assessment and the criteria for evaluation at present, resulting in the lack of accuracy and fairness in the application of performance assessment.2. Through research, the author designed some performance assessment programs to evaluate students’level of conducting physics experiments. In order to solve the problems of ignoring the evaluation of students’experiments and unreasonable evaluation in students’scientific inquiry ability, the author, based on the analysis of the feasibility about the application of performance assessment in physics experiment teaching, designed the following steps on how to apply performance assessment in physics experiment teaching:(1) Determining the purpose and goals.(2) Designing the performance tasks.(3) Designing the process and tools used in the teaching process, including designing the previewing questionnaire before the experimental course, designing the Behavior Checklist and PTA Scale of exploration capability in the experimenting applied in the experimental process, and the summary task which at the end of the experiment.(4) Formulate evaluation criteria for performance assessment, and evaluate students’ level reasonably.At the same time, the author took the chapter "Experiment: Using RBI Timer to Measure the Speed" in Physics (I) as an example, and provided a case of the above steps for the reader to refer.3. Through research, the author adopted Socratic Seminar Assessment to design programs to evaluate students’performance level in the physics classroom. In order to solve the problems of subjectively evaluating students and lacking the scientific evaluation criteria, the author designed the following steps on how to apply Socratic Seminar Assessment: (1)Choosing suitable teaching content to carry out Socratic Seminar Assessment;(2) Clarifying the purpose and goals of evaluation;(3)Putting forward a question worth researching and discussing;(4) Designing the teaching process in the classroom;(5)Formulating the evaluation criteria of Socratic Seminar Assessment, that is, designing PTA Scale to evaluate students’classroom performance.Meanwhile, the author took the chapter "Achievements of Gravitation" in Physics (II) as an example, and provided a case of the above steps for reader to the refer and understand further the operation of Socratic Seminar Assessment.