# Introduction

This free course, Assessment in secondary science, will identify and explore some of the key issues around assessment in secondary school science. Engaging with these issues and debates will help you to reflect upon and develop your practice as a science teacher. You will also develop a greater awareness of the role of assessment in science education.

In Section 1 you will consider what is assessed in science. Section 2 examines how assessment can support learning. This is developed in Sections 3 and 4, which focus on assessing students’ conceptual understanding and involving students in assessment.

This course you help you to examine some of the many issues that surround assessment. You will explore the connection between assessment, teaching and students’ learning, as well as how to involve students in assessment. You will be asked to draw on your own experiences of, and ideas about, assessment; how the concept of assessment has changed in recent times; and the principles underpinning assessment that support learning and what teachers assess in science.

Now listen to an introduction to this course by its author, Sandra Amos:

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Transcript

As you work through the activities you will be encouraged to record your thoughts on an idea, an issue or a reading, and how it relates to your practice. Hopefully you will have opportunities to discuss your ideas with colleagues. We therefore suggest that you use a notebook – either physical or electronic – to record your thoughts in a way in which they can easily be retrieved and revisited. If you prefer, however, you can record your ideas in response boxes within the course – in order to do this, and to retrieve your responses, you will need to enrol on the course.

This OpenLearn course is part of a collection of Open University short courses for teachers and student teachers.

OpenLearn - Assessment in secondary science
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