Fizzics

Both S3 classes had a brief glimpse at their survey results today. These were raw results, not filtered by class, so each bar chart shows 40 respondents rather than the 20 you would expect for a science class.

I realised that I had done something stupid in questions 8 & 9, with results that are sufficiently interesting for me to share them. Question 8 asked pupils to rate themselves using the statement

“I know that electrical energy transformed each second =IV”

From the image below, we see that only 50% of my S3 pupils are confident that they know this.

To help non-physicists see what is interesting, I need to explain that

energy transformed each second = power

current has the symbol I

voltage has the symbol V

Armed with this, have a look at the details for question 9 (below) and the responses I received to the statement

“I can perform calculations involving power, current and voltage.”

These two questions are asking the same thing, yet an extra 35% of the pupils felt that they had achieved the learning outcome.

The reason for the difference lies in the language used to express the question. What does this tell me? I think it tells me two things - three things if I include checking the questions before I set them!

First of all, the learning is not as secure as I would like. While pupils might know the relationship that exists between power, current and voltage, they lack a sufficiently deep understanding to put this relationship into context.  The second point is that the language we use to frame a question plays a critical role in determining whether or not pupils can provide an answer. How much of the assessment we put children through is a true assessment of the subject area in question and how much is a test of their ability to unpick the language of assessment to identify find the real question underneath?

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Assessment for learning, reflection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.