Confronting dilemmas posed by three‐dimensional classroom assessment: Introduction to a virtual issue of Science Education

Abstract

Wide-scale adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards has raised new challenges for classroom teachers as they learn not only how to engage students in this new vision of science learning, but also how to assess students' engagement in that learning. This paper introduces a virtual special issue of Science Education focused on dilemmas of three-dimensional science assessment raised by the current wave of reform. Drawing on the author's extensive secondary science classroom research experiences, the paper identifies five dilemmas facing science teachers as they have learned about three-dimensional classroom assessment. It matches each of these dilemmas with an article previously published in Science Education that provides framing and insight to inform the issues involved with that dilemma. The introduction closes with questions for the field raised by these problems of practice, and makes suggestions for researchers as they support teachers in designing, adapting, enacting, and using information from assessments linked to the Next Generation Science Standards.