Erin Furtak is an Associate Professor of Science Education at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her talk was titled "Dilemmas of Three-Dimensional Science Assessment." 

Abstract

The vision of science teaching and learning in the NGSS places new demands on students as they learn science, curriculum developers to design instructional materials that engage students in scientific practices and crosscutting concepts to learn disciplinary core ideas, teachers to engage students in such learning and—perhaps most challengingly—to design and interpret information from assessments of this type of learning. The "practice turn" in our policies about how we want students to learn science reflects increasing focus on situated and sociocultural perspectives on teaching and learning; yet, our assessment system continues to be a reflection, frozen in time, of behaviorist and cognitive views of learning. This talk will begin with a conceptual analysis of three-dimensional classroom assessment, framing dilemmas science teachers face in this new era developed from an ongoing research-practice partnership.