Development of a Student Self-Evaluation Instrument in Inquiries

This educational design study aims at operationalizing design characteristics that lead to a for pre-university science students feasible self-evaluation instrument to evaluate the accuracy, reliability and validity in successive science inquiry units. A self-evaluation instrument with nineteen rubrics was designed. This design was based on four characteristics that were identified from the literature, among which the Concepts of Evidence model and the SOLO taxonomy. To determine the feasibility of the instrument upper secondary school students (n=24) used the self-evaluation instrument in class in three successive – general science, biology and physics – inquiry units. Data were obtained from written documents, audioand videotapes, questionnaires and interviews. It is concluded that the self-evaluation instrument with rubrics seems to have the potential in learning pre-university science students how to evaluate the accuracy, reliability and validity of an inquiry. The four design characteristics are essential, but a major revision regards that part of the students self-evaluation instrument needs to become holistic instead of analytic. In the discussion and implications recommendations for further research and development are given.