Science Competence Assessment at Middle School: Teacher's Perception and Practice

Abstract

Science competence is one of the most vital learning outcomes of Natural Science subjects in general education. The research presents a guideline to develop assessment criteria/toolkits following the science competence components containing science awareness, science inquiry, and scientific problem-solving. A topic titled "how to classify mixtures and separate the mixture" in natural science six is presented to illustrate the guideline. A deep interview method was applied with thirteen natural science teachers to gather information about teachers' perceptions and practices in teaching and assessing activities to support students in enhancing their science competence. Feedback from teachers about the proposed guidelines was also collected. The research results created a picture of implementing Natural Science subjects in secondary schools with information about the challenges and needs of teachers to improve the issues. This paper is expected to provide teachers have more valuable tools in the innovation phase toward competence-based teaching and assessment.