The programme for professional development of chemistry teachers assessment competency Scientific paper

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of the programme for professional development of chemistry teachers on their competencies for conducting formative and summative assessment in chemistry teaching. The programme participants were 30 chemistry teachers from primary and second­ary schools. Data were collected using a questionnaire at the beginning and at the end of the programme implementation. The programme included four workshops with the same structure: the introduction, group work and the dis­cussion of the results obtained through group work. The workshops focused on: i) the assessment as a support for chemistry learning; ii) the harmo­ni­za­tion of teaching and learning activities, formative and summative assessment, feed­back from formative assessment and the criteria used to evaluate students in summative assessment; iii) the evaluation of the validity of tasks used for form­ative and summative assessment according to the curricula aims and the edu­cational standards; iv) designing tasks for monitoring students progress tow­ards certain educational standards. Teachers responses show the impact of the programme for the development of their competencies for assessment, parti­cularly regarding formative and summative assessment and designing various kinds of assessment in accordance with the achievement standards.