This master thesis explores the topics of assessment and the course of Science and Technology classes in grades four and five of primary school. It defines assessment, its purpose, types, forms and perspectives. Later this master defines the Science and Technology subject – its objectives, teaching strategies, assessment, didactic approaches, recommendations and international studies, which help us compare knowledge of the subject of our pupils with knowledge of pupils from other countries. In the field of Science and Technology in the fourth and fifth grade in Slovenia, we see only a handful of research in the field of assessment, so we decided to investigate this in more detail and present the results of our work.
With the help of quantitative methodological approach in this master thesis we tried to find out at what level the teachers feel confident for teaching the Science and Technology subject and use diverse teaching forms and methods in the lessons. We were also interested in annual frequency of different forms of assessment in the Science and Technology subject. With the help of submitted written knowledge assessments, we checked whether they were compiled in accordance with the use of questions of different taxonomic levels. Finally, we looked for thematic groups that cause the most problems for teachers in their assessment. We obtained the data by means of a survey questionnaire and analysis of knowledge assessments.
The results of the survey showed that the majority of teachers feel competent to teach the Science and Technology course in the fourth and fifth grade of primary school. Also, the vast majority of them use a variety of teaching forms and methods in their lessons. The majority of teachers orally assess pupils twice every school year and twice through written assessment. In the majority of answers, teachers noted that they also evaluate pupils once a year based on practical skills, while about a third of the teachers on top of that use other forms of evaluation. We analyzed the knowledge assessments sent to us by teachers according to the updated Bloom’s Taxonomy. The analysis showed that a more than ninety percent of the questions and tasks tested lower-level knowledge (mainly remembering and understanding). However, questions about the higher-level knowledge by taxonomy also arose. One-seventh of the teachers answered that they have problems with the assessment of certain thematic groups. In this context, teachers highlighted objectives from the following topics: movement and transportation, flow of matter, devices and machines, wind.
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