Ámbito humano: el suspiro de los hombres.

Sadler (1989) argued that assessment for summative purpose encompasses the notion of summing up or summarizing what is attained after learning has taken place within a specific period of time. Hence, a summative assessment result provides an indication of what the learners have learnt after a specific period of teaching and learning. The specific periods can be identified by a topic in a subject, school terms, semesters or an academic year. The summary information from summative assessment is mainly used to inform the learners of what they have achieved as well as provide a report to parents, teachers, the school administration and other stakeholders such as the ministry of education (Harlen & James, 1997). Given different time periods, summative assessment may take place on one occasion as in one-shot national external examinations at the end of the semester and year or continuously as internal assessments administered by a teacher throughout a period of time.

One of the aims of SBA was to provide continuous summative assessments throughout the year instead of one-short examination at the end of an academic year (Cheung, 2016; Maxwell, 2004). With such continuous summative assessments, cumulative marks from each individual summative assessment tasks are aggregated at the end of a specific teaching and learning period, usually at the end of an academic year or course. In addition, continuous summative assessment can employ different tasks to assess a wider range of learning outcomes such as practical skills in school science (Bell & Cowie, 2001; Cheung, 2016). In fact, continuous summative assessment is

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used for practical work in the context of SBA in Hongkong and Singapore. For example, Yung (2012) pointed out that in Hongkong, one-shot external practical examination of science subjects at the end of Advanced Level (AL) were replaced by “Teacher Assessment Schemes (TAS)” (p. 125) as SBA. Similarly, Singapore implemented the “Science Practical Assessment (SPA) scheme…to replace the former one-time practical test administered at the end of General Certificate Examination O – and A – level science courses” (p. 125). Actually, Yip and Cheung (2005) claimed that SBA removes the disadvantages of one-shot examination. Similarly, Maxwell (2004) pointed out that SBA lightens the pressure of one-shot examination that both learners and teachers likely to face at the end of semester or academic year.

According to Cheung (2016), the use of SBA as a continuous summative assessment to assess learners’ practical skills in science has little doubts compared to a one-shot practical skills test at the end of a long period. Given the number of learners in one science classrooms it is also a challenge to assess learners’ practical skills in a one- shot practical examination. Hence, using continuous summative assessments in SBA can alleviate the challenge and doubt in administering practical skills assessment in a large class size using one-shot examination (Cheung, 2016). With continuous summative assessment tasks science teachers can take time to watch over several groups of learners as they perform the tasks in different practical work for assessment throughout the year. Different types of practical work can also be used at different times to assess different practical skills (Yung, 2001). For example, various practical skills can be assessed in different practical work such as laboratory experiments, field excursions and open inquiries. Besides, with continuous summative assessments, learners can also keep their assessment results as portfolios (Bell, 2005).

The assessment of practical skills in science appeared to vary a lot in different countries (Abrahams et al., 2013). For example, in analysing the assessment of practical skills for the ten top countries that did well in the Program for International Assessment (PISA), Abrahams et al. (2013) found that some countries directly assess practical skills while others assess indirectly. Countries that “performed well in terms of their science PISA results, such as China, Singapore, New Zealand and Finland” (p. 16) directly assess their learners’ practical skills. Other countries like Australia, England and Scotland assess their learners’ practical skills using indirect assessment

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methods. Abrahams et al. (2013) found that in China, ranked first in 2009 PISA in science, science teachers directly observe and assess between two to four learners in practical examinations. Science teachers directly observe the abilities of learners to scientifically select, use and look after instruments as well as correctly follow practical procedures. While in Australia, ranked 10th _{in 2009 PISA in science, teachers assess} learners’ practical skills indirectly through their completed written reports that indicated their abilities to measure, collect, interpret as well as make inferences and scientific conclusions. Whether the assessment is direct or indirect, this study is premised on the view that SBA can be utilised for continuous summative assessment of the practical skills.

Practical work with learning outcomes concerning the development of manual and procedural skills can be enhanced and assessed using the continuous summative assessment. A study conducted by Hoe and Tiam (2010) in Singapore indicated that learners preferred the SBA of practical skills because science teachers can assess them more accurately during the individual practical work. As well, learners have more opportunities in SBA to improve and demonstrate their enhanced practical skills progressively after each consecutive practical activity. Having many practical works to assess practical skills over a period of time is also an avenue for learners’ enculturation into science (Hodson, 1998). Besides, with continuous summative assessments science teachers can generate a progressive understanding about as well as familiarise with learners’ cognitive, skills and affective capabilities in performing science practical work. This is significant for science teachers when scaffolding for the development of conceptual understanding as well as procedural skills and knowledge in open inquiry (Zion & Mendelovici, 2012).

Continuous summative assessment in SBA can also be utilised for teaching and assessing conceptual and procedural understanding in practical work. According to Got and Duggan (2002) conceptual understanding means:

knowledge base of substantive concepts such as the laws of motion… which underpinned by scientific facts,… procedural understanding…mean the thinking behind the doing of science and include the concepts such as deciding how many measurement to take, over what range and with what

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sample, how to interpret the pattern in the resulting data and how to evaluate the whole task (p. 186).

This means, conceptual understanding includes the understanding of procedures, equipment, data and drawing conclusions. Gott and Duggan (2002) called the understanding of procedures as the concept of evidence which underpinned by practical skills as well as knowledge of equipment and their uses. With open inquiry practical work, learners are required to use their conceptual and procedural understanding as well as knowledge of equipment and uses (Gott & Duggan, 2002). As such, learners can be assessed for their conceptual understanding as well as procedural understanding and knowledge of the investigation itself (Hodson, 2014). This means, learners should be able to demonstrate their understanding of scientific concepts as well as concepts of evidences, processes and equipment. These understanding can be demonstrated and assessed by their abilities to develop a hypothesis; design procedures; use equipment to collect appropriate data; analyse and interpret results and draw scientific conclusions (Gott & Duggan, 2002).

However, continuous summative assessment of conceptual and procedural understanding in practical work is complex and demanding for both learners and science teachers (Abrahams et al., 2013; Got & Duggan, 2002). Most practical work used for assessing learners’ conceptual and procedural understanding were carried out indirectly through written reports (Abrahams et al. 2013). For example, in France, learners’ practical work are assessed in four areas. First area, is a written explanation for the choice of apparatus and methods that links to the hypothesis. This requires conceptual understanding or knowledge of scientific facts as well as procedural knowledge. Second area is the assessment of learners’ ability in using the equipment correctly which involves practical skills. Third area is the assessment of learners’ ability to select, record and present results with various inscriptions, graphs, tables and words. The fourth area is the assessment of the learners’ ability to write an argumentative conclusion (Abrahams et al., 2013). The third and fourth areas require both the conceptual and procedural understanding. It is about making a link between the domain of objects and observables to the domain of ideas (Abrahams & Millar, 2009; Osborne, 2014). Basically, these four areas of assessment were meant to reflect

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learners’ understanding of concepts, procedures, equipment and uses as well as the ability to make links between objects and ideas.

However, for summative assessment to occur in SBA, the process of teaching and learning should have been taken place first. As Salder (1989) expressed, summative assessment is conducted to prove that learning has taken place prior to the assessment. In this regard, trainee and practising science teachers’ views on summative assessment in SBA was explored in this study. In addition, SBA can also be used for formative assessment or assessment for learning (Bell, 2005: Cheung, 2016).