Recent Projects


ASK Project

Assessing Science Knowledge (ASK) from the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS), University of California at Berkeley, is a four-year project (with a start date of April 2003) designed to define, field test, and validate effective assessment tools and techniques to be used by grade 3–6 classroom teachers to assess, guide, and confirm student learning in science. The assessments will be conceptualized, developed, and refined using one exemplary science-education program, the Full Option Science System (FOSS). Curriculum developers/researchers at LHS will collaborate with eight national test centers, comprising hundreds of teachers and thousands of students, and assessment researchers from the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Education and SRI Internationa to validate new classroom assessments based on NSES and AAAS Benchmarks. Guided by a synthesis of current cognitive theory and measurement principles, the assessment tools, procedures, and item banks developed by ASK will provide valid and fair inferences about student achievement, and have the potential to affect the design and implementation of all research-based elementary science programs.


FAST Project

Formative Assessment for Science through Technology (FAST) is a three-year project to research, develop, and evaluate the effectiveness of a technology-based, formative-assessment system. The assessment system is designed to collect classroom observational data, improve elementary teachers' analysis of written student work, and provide diagnostic suggestions to increase students' understanding of science concepts and processes. The system will link sets of instructional maps that represent key concepts and the typical development in student thinking about specific units of study. These maps will provide teachers (grades 3–6) with a window into students' conceptual development. Software for handheld and desktop computers will enable teachers to collect, organize, and analyze data to determine next-step instructional decisions and provide detailed reports about student achievement.