Development of a test of process skills for Grade 3 elementary school pupils

Abstract

Although the development of process skills has been accepted as being an important part of primary school curricula in science and in other subjects, few valid and reliable tests exist for their assessment. Therefore, a test is being developed to assess these skills. It is designed to meet seven criteria (such as testing process skills taught during the first three years of schooling and not being slanted towards any particular subject area). Three versions of Form 1 were administered to 318 Jamaican students in Grade 3 classes in 10 rural primary schools. The mean of this form was 20.67 with a standard deviation of 6.6. A Cronbach alpha of 0.85 was obtained. Six of the items had a facility of 0.32 or less; six of the items had a facility of 0.75 or greater. Discrimination indices were also satisfactory. Plans are underway for testing all six versions of the test simultaneously with students of the same age in Barbados, Belize, and Jamaica. It is hoped that the resulting tests will be a useful resource for assessing the levels of development of the process skills for either research purposes or for evaluating student learning due to curriculum development