5D Assessment Development Tools
A Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) calls for educators to adopt an integrated approach to instruction and assessment in which students use disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts to make sense of phenomena or problems that connect to students’ interests and support the development of students’ science identities as knowers, doers, and users of science.
“A major goal for science education should be to provide all students with the background to systematically investigate issues related to their personal and community priorities. They should be able to frame scientific questions pertinent to their interests, conduct investigations, and seek out relevant scientific arguments and data, review and apply those arguments to the situation at hand, and communicate their scientific understanding and arguments to others.“
National Research Council, 2012, p. 278
While instructional materials aligned with the NRC Framework are now available, teachers still need support with assessing student learning in ways that are consistent with this vision for meaningful science learning and performance and engage students’ interests and identities.
In response, the 5D Assessment Project, a NSF-funded collaboration between BSCS Science Learning and the University of Colorado Boulder, developed a suite of research-driven, open-access tools and processes to help teachers and/or teacher leaders develop from scratch or customize assessments to be more aligned with this “five dimensional” Framework vision. These tools and processes can be used with any set of instructional materials. In addition, they can be used to identify alternative phenomena contexts to support phenomenon-based instruction.
We invite you to learn more about our approach and its evidence-base on our website. Please contact us with any questions or for more information for how we can work with your team of educators.
This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number DRL-2010086. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
The 5D Assessment Professional Learning Materials by Inquiry Hub & BSCS Science Learning are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
