New Perspectives in Science Education

In Japan, the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has been consulting the Central Council for Education on the “appropriate curriculum standards, etc. in elementary and secondary education” for the next curriculum guidelines and holding discussions. In the discussions, it has been pointed out that in addition to an increase in quality and amount of knowledge, which relates to “what to teach,” emphasis on quality and deepening of learning, which relates to “how to learn,” is necessary to cultivate essential power in children, suggesting the need to enhance independent-minded and collaborative learning for the discovery and solution of problems, and teaching methods, etc. for such learning. Besides, it has been indicated that it is also necessary to improve the principles of learning evaluation on “what kind of ability was developed” as a result of learning, from the same viewpoint. With intensification of discussions for revision of school curriculum guidelines, the Central Education Council presented the “summary of issues,” which points out that because “what you know and what you can do,” “how you use your knowledge and ability” and “how you interact with the society and the world and live a better life” should be connected to cultivate qualifications and abilities, as the “concept for Japan’s curriculum design”, and facing children’s learning is a key to do so, “enhancement of learning evaluation” as well as “enrichment of the curriculum management” while maintaining the perspective of “how to learn (active learning)” are important.

This research focuses on “enhancement of learning evaluation” stated above. That is, the research plan was formulated with a thought that analyzing the relationship between comment-based evaluation and point-based evaluation under the evaluation standards for a mutual evaluation sheet based on criterion-referenced proactive design leads to curriculum management, and to improvement of teaching of teachers and learning for children. In this research, comparative reviews of the respective evaluations and the relationship between them were made. Specifically, the research was conducted through the following three comparative reviews: comparative review I: effects of rewriting; comparative review II: effects of repetition; and comparative review III: effects of retention. In the comparison, the relationship between point-based evaluation and comment-based evaluation was reviewed using a statistical approach. Consequently, the comparison has revealed that there is an interesting relationship between point-based evaluation and comment-based evaluation.