School-Based Assessment of Science Students’ Practical Skills in Hong Kong

Abstract

Practical work is an important component of school science. However, over the past four decades there has been considerable debate about how assessment of science students’ practical skills should be conducted as part of the public examination. In 1978, coursework assessment of practical skills was introduced to the Hong Kong Advanced Level chemistry examination and then extended to biology and physics examinations in 1995 and 2002, respectively. Recently, new chemistry, biology, and physics curricula for Hong Kong Secondary 4–6 students (aged about 16–18) were implemented in 2009 and a revised coursework assessment scheme called School-Based Assessment (SBA) was launched. To date, few published studies have investigated secondary school students’ beliefs about SBA of science practical skills. This chapter reports on a study involving Hong Kong Secondary 6 chemistry students. Focus group interviews were organized for 36 students and a questionnaire was administered to 306 students drawn from ten schools. Both the interviews and questionnaire survey revealed that most students were skeptical about the worth of SBA and their beliefs about the value of SBA were affected by three major factors: the validity of SBA, formative functions of SBA, and effects of SBA on student motivation to learn chemistry. Multiple regression analysis of the questionnaire data indicated that the most powerful predictor of student beliefs about the value of SBA is the formative functions of SBA, followed by the effects of SBA on student motivation. The implications of these findings for implementation of SBA in school are discussed.