Why Students Answer TIMSS Science Test Items the Way They Do

Harlow, Ann; Jones, Alister

doi:10.1023/b:rise.0000033761.79449.56

Cited by 33 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…During interviews, students were scaffolded on the questions. In another study, Harlow (2003) interviewed selective 8th grade students on TIMSS test questions and compared their oral responses to their written responses to the TIMSS test. She found that incorrect responses to the standardized tests are not necessarily an indication of a lack of conceptual knowledge, but are sometimes due to students' misinterpretation of a question, a word, or a phrase or a diagram.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Students' progression of understanding the matter concept from elementary to high school

Liu

Lesniak

2005

Sci. Ed.

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Using the US national sample from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Rasch modeling method, this study identified the conceptual progression sequence of various matter concept aspects, and compared students' latent abilities against the sequence. We found that the four matter aspects, i.e. conservation, physical properties and change, chemical properties and change, and structure and composition, are interrelated. Although they differ in overall difficulty with an increased difficulty from conservation to physical properties and change to chemical properties and change and to structure and composition, the difference among them is not statistically significant at the 0.05 level. Elementary school students (3rd and 4th grades) have an average latent ability below the average difficulty of items on the conservation aspect; 7th graders' average latent ability is above the average difficulty level of the conservation and physical properties and change aspects; 8th and 12th grade students' average latent ability is above the average difficulty level of all the aspects except for structure and composition; and 12th grade science specialization students' average latent ability is above the average difficulty level of all the four aspects. We proposed a dynamic overlapping wave model of matter concept development to make sense the above-identified progression patterns.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Students' progression of understanding the matter concept from elementary to high school

Liu

Lesniak

2005

Sci. Ed.

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“…La princi-pale raison est que « l'approche scientifique » peut, dans une certaine mesure, se définir de façon pragmatique par une méthodologie commençant par la formulation des questions de recherche et des hypothèses. Les Atkin & Black, 1997 ;Brown, 1998 ;Goldstein, 2004a ;Keitel & Kilpatrick, 1999 ;Kellaghan & Greaney, 2001 ;Orpwood, 2000 ;Reddy, 2005) ; d'autres sont plus spécialement liées à des problèmes méthodo-logiques (Blum et al, 2001 ;Bonnet, 2002 ;Freudenthal, 1975 ;Goldstein, 1995Goldstein, & 2004bHarlow & Jones, 2004 ;Wang, 2001). …”

Section: Au-delà De L'objectif Premier Des éTudes Comparativesunclassified

Les évaluations internationales et la recherche en éducation : principaux objectifs et perspectives

Olsen¹,

Lie²

2006

rfp

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“…Some students may have the necessary skills and strategies to solve a problem, but if they do not understand the question as such, they will probably not be able to answer it correctly. Harlow and Jones (2004) found that ambiguous language use in TIMSS created opportunities for different interpretations, resulting in answers that did not always reflect students' actual knowledge. Items must therefore minimize ambiguity, be at a suitable language level, and be comprehensible to all participants (Harlow & Jones, 2004).…”

Section: Aims Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Harlow and Jones (2004) found that ambiguous language use in TIMSS created opportunities for different interpretations, resulting in answers that did not always reflect students' actual knowledge. Items must therefore minimize ambiguity, be at a suitable language level, and be comprehensible to all participants (Harlow & Jones, 2004). Furthermore, students may not understand that certain questions are scientific questions when they are placed in an everyday context (Schoultz, 2000).…”

Section: Aims Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research on tests has shown that incorrect responses do not necessarily indicate a lack of knowledge about a concept (e.g. Harlow & Jones, 2004;Oakland & Lane, 2004;Rodrigues, Haladyna, & Downing, 2002;Schoultz, 2000). It can be caused by poorly constructed questions, students' lack of vocabulary, poor reading skills, or misinterpretations of (elements within) questions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Language of Science and Readability. Correlations between Linguistic Features in TIMSS Science Items and the Performance of Different Groups of Swedish 8th Grade Students.

Persson

2016

NJLR

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This exploratory study examines how linguistic features of the Swedish TIMSS 2011 grade 8 science items correlate with results from different groups of students. Language use in different science subjects is analysed using four characteristic meaning dimensions of scientific language: Packing, Precision, Presentation of information, and Personification within the text, along with established measures of readability and information load. For each subject, one or more of the meaning dimensions show statistically significant correlations with students' performances with small to medium effect sizes. The results show that higher packing is positively correlated with students' results in earth science, negatively correlated in physics, and has no significant correlations in biology or chemistry. Placing items in everyday contexts reduces the likelihood of the items being answered correctly, and skilled readers are aided by higher precision in items, while less skilled readers seem unaffected. Many meaning dimensions that influence high performers' results do not influence those of low performers, and vice versa. The use of meaning dimensions is shown to be an enriching complementary method for analysing language use in science, as it connects the language use in items to student performance, while established measures do not.

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Why Students Answer TIMSS Science Test Items the Way They Do

Cited by 33 publications

References 12 publications

Students' progression of understanding the matter concept from elementary to high school

Students' progression of understanding the matter concept from elementary to high school

Les évaluations internationales et la recherche en éducation : principaux objectifs et perspectives

The Language of Science and Readability. Correlations between Linguistic Features in TIMSS Science Items and the Performance of Different Groups of Swedish 8th Grade Students.

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