Analysis and Review of Contexts in Science Items: Effects on Student Performance

• In Event: Working With Context, Collaboration, Challenge, Connections, and Combination in Mixed Methods

Abstract

About 70% and 73% of the released NAEP and TIMSS science items for 8th grade, respectively, use context (Wang & Li, 2014). Unfortunately, contextualized items are mainly constructed by using either conventional wisdom or writing rules summarized from non-contextualized items. The proposed paper: (1) describes a system to analyze contexts; (2) maps the characteristics of the contexts on released items from diverse sources and developed by the research team (e.g., NAEP, TIMSS, PISA, AAAS, published papers), and (3) provides evidence about the context characteristics that seem to be related to students’ performance. The paper advances our knowledge about issues related to the development of contextualized items and makes evident the carefulness with which context in items should be constructed.

Authors

• Maria Araceli Ruiz-Primo, Stanford University

• Min Li, University of Washington

• Klint Kanopka, Stanford University

• Philip Hernandez, Stanford University

• Dongsheng Dong, University of Washington - Seattle

• Nixi Wang, University of Washington - Seattle

• Jim Minstrell, FACET Innovations