New Perspectives in Science Education

The National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023 has set a transformative agenda for Indian education, emphasising the need for a competency-based education which fosters critical 21st-century skills [1]. Central to this transformation is assessment as learning and for learning with frameworks that evaluate abilities and competencies rather than rote knowledge [2]. For science education, and regarding the development of a research mindset and scientific inquiry skills in student, assessment is viewed as an integral part of pedagogy with individualised feedback is timely provided to support learners in developing these skills and mindset and to help teachers to modulate their pedagogy [3].  In response to this priority, and in order to create an assessment framework and training materials aligned with it, a survey assessing secondary science teachers’ pedagogical confidence, assessment practices, and instructional approaches related to scientific inquiry was designed and validated. The paper presents the need and design of this survey. Drawing on literature on inquiry-based science education and teacher self-efficacy, Likert-scale items reflecting key scientific inquiry skills such as hypothesis formulation, experimental design, data interpretation, and assessment strategies were included. To validate and further develop the survey, data from 1,418 secondary science teachers in India was collected with factor analysis, indicating five interpretable factors related to inquiry skills teaching: Confidence in teaching and the teaching of measurement and manipulative skills, in particular, assessment competence, pedagogical knowledge and training and support awareness. Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficient was found to be high (0.97), indicating the scale reliability.