The Importance Of Assessment In The Educational Process - Science Teachers’ Perspective

The focus of the PROFILES project lies on promoting reflection‐oriented teaching, in order to enhance the students’ scientific literacy. The emphasis is oriented on the promotion of the teachers’ scientific and pedagogical competencies, especially on IBSE (as a specific strategy) and related approaches that promote this strategy. From this point of view, Science teachers - Physics, Chemistry, Biology -, as reflective practitioners, should be concerned by the process of assessment, which has to support an important restructuring process. The assessment is not only a final point in the educational process, but it has to become an integral part of the process, able to provide to teachers and students the necessary feed-back to improve their activity during the educational process. In this way, the assessment gets a special importance in modern science lessons. The paper aims to investigate the science teachers’ perception concerning the importance of the assessment in the educational process, reported to the following aspects: (a) use a variety of assessment strategies that are designed to measure competencies; (b) undertake a range of formative assessment strategies with one’s own students; (c) provide suitable positive feedback to both “more able” and “weaker” students; (d) assess students’ knowledge and skills according to their portfolios.