The study is based on the national educational standards in chemistry for the school-leaving graduation from middle schools (KMK, 2005).

Issue: Development and testing a model measuring the competence to evaluate in chemistry

The Institute for Educational Progress (IQB) evaluates and develops these standards in cooperation with several institutes for science education. As a part of the whole project the competence of the students to evaluate and judge should be investigated. The evaluation and judgement represents one area of competence, in addition to usage of content knowledge, communication and acquirement of knowledge. The competence to evaluate and judge is the ability to decide among several options in problem situations (Bögeholz, 2007).

The study aims to clarify the question how the students’ competence to evaluate and judge is influenced by external aspects. Further the focus of the study is to compare chemistry and biology and to identify, if a chemistry specific evaluation competence can be separated from other subjects.

Items are constructed concerning situations which needed to be evaluated and concerning the influential aspects. These items are from the chemical and biological subjects. All Items are going to be answered by the students in a paper-pencil-test. In addition cognitive abilities will be tested and interviews will be performed with one part of the sample. The whole sample includes 600 students from different schooltypes.

Termtime

• 2009-2011

Funding

• IQB

Supervisors

• Maik Walpuski & Elke Sumfleth

Dissertation

• Julia Hostenbach (née. Göbel)