Developing and Assessing a Learning Progression for the Ecosystem

Abstract

There have been much efforts to reconstruct the science curriculum focusing on Disciplinary Core Ideas(DCI) in many countries such as America and Europe, the most practical effort has been to design a curriculum with learning progressions(LPs). LPs describe stepwise how students can systematically move toward the understanding of more sophisticated ideas or scientific activities and explain in succession the process of understanding the ideas while the students learn. In this study, a LP for ecosystems has been developed, and the developed LP is then evaluated accordingly. The Ecosystem is one of the DCI of the life science in Next Generation Science Standards(NGSS). The development process of the LP was set at step 4(Development, Assessment, Analysis, and Amendment), and developed through an iterative process of sequences. As a result of analyzing the developed LP, an assessment based on the LP provides reliable information to identifying student ability. This study proposes the development process of the LP and its methodological aspects to use Core Achievement Standards, Ordered Multiple-Choice items and the Rasch model. In addition, using the empirically proven LP suggests a way of strengthening curriculum linked to educational content, teaching methods and assessment. Utilizing the proposed development process in this study will be to present the standard into the direction of becoming part of the curriculum. Currently, the state of domestic research for the LP is still lacking.This study determined the development process of the LP and the need to conduct future research on the LPs.