Seminar Abstract 2011/002/SM

Reflective Assessment in Chemistry

Kok Siang Tan Priscilla Pei Xin Chua

Natural Sciences and Science Education Postgraduate Diploma-in-Education
Academic Group (Junior College) July 2010 Programme
National Institute of Education National Institute of Education
Nanyang Technological University Nanyang Technological University

Abstract

It has been said that assessment drives learning. If students are expected to provide the only right
answer, they usually work to get it while dismissing alternative ways or plausible answers. As
entrepreneurship and creativity count in the corporate, industrial and research worlds, school
graduates should be more reflective in their approaches to problem solving. This presentation
proposes an alternative assessment mode through a reflective learning process (“observe-generate-
relate”, Tan, 2008). Students are posed open-ended chemistry learning tasks as problems to be
solved, sets of data to be analyzed or diagrams to be interpreted. Student responses are simply
scored as follows: awarded 1 mark for every point raised that is task-relevant and an additional 1
to 2 marks for the same point on how “correct” or “accurate” it is. Hence, students will be
encouraged to observe keenly the information provided and to generate as many relevant and
correct responses to the task. The class results can then be presented in a rank-ordered manner and
grading could be done via banding. A student’s performance on a list of chemistry tasks could be
compared to the set of peer data. Results from a study done with secondary school chemistry
students showed the viability of this assessment mode (with limitations to be discussed). A similar
trial was done with a group of NIE chemistry teacher trainees attending the pre-service
Postgraduate Diploma-in-Education Programme (Junior College). Assessment ideas from this
trial will also be shared in this presentation.

We thank Mr Simon Foo (TJC), Ms Cheryl Lim (SRJC) and colleagues from the class of PGDE (JC) July 2010 Programme
for their contributions, comments and advice in the course of preparing this paper for the seminar.
Citation: Tan, K.S. & P.P.X. Chua (2011, January). Reflective assessment in chemistry. Paper presented at the Chemistry
Instructional programme Support Group Sharing Session for A Level chemistry teachers, Dunman High School, Singapore.
Published: 2011 (Abstract) [For full paper, please contact first author at koksiang.tan@nie.edu.sg or kstan28@hotmail.com]
URL: http://www.scribd.com/doc/43400124