The Development of an Instrument for the Measurement of Science Process Skills of the Korean Elementary and Middle School Students

초.중학생들의 과학탐구능력 측정도구의 개발

There are a considerable number of instruments in testing science process skills in Korea as well as America and Europe. However, it has been difficult to find the instruments encompass the wide range of scientific process skills. Most instruments developed and used in Korea were focused on a school level or a few components of scientific process skills. In this study, the researchers examined the whole body of scientific process and identified 10 component skills. Three items for each component process skills were developed and revised by two pilot tests. The final instruments showed moderate difficulty, discrimination index, reliability, and validity. The instrument was also tested the usability by finding differences of students' ability on science process skills by grade levels, sexes, and city size. The results showed that the instrument was proved to be useful to discriminates the differences.