The assessment of practical work in school science

This article reviews how practical work, including practical skills, is currently summatively assessed in school science in a number of countries and makes comparisons with how other subjects, such as music and modern foreign languages, summatively assess skills. Whilst practical skills in school science are clearly valued as being of importance, there is a lack of clarity as to what these skills actually are and how they might, most effectively, be validly assessed. Countries vary greatly in the extent to which they employ what we term ‘Direct Assessment of Practical Skills’ (DAPS) or ‘Indirect Assessment of Practical Skills’ (IAPS). Each of these approaches has advantages and disadvantages but we conclude that too great a reliance on IAPS reduces the likelihood that practical work will be taught and learnt as well as it might be

Spirituality and giftedness type: A tale of adolescent variance

This chapter is an overview of the key discussions and findings from the author\u27s PhD thesis (Walton, 2015). Spirituality and its relation to giftedness are discussed, along with the theoretical framework for the research. The latter included applying the principles of Multiple Intelligences theory (MI) to the Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT), creating the Differentiated Model of Multiple Intelligences (DMMI). An examination of the differences and commonalities in Australian gifted policies, with suggested categorisation, provided the background framing. Adolescents who were members of academic, creative and sporting gifted groups in schools in a large regional area of New South Wales (NSW) were surveyed on their views in relation to spirituality, along with a non-gifted control group. The key findings were: (1) significant variation in the spirituality of female gifted students, which were not reflected in the male responses; and (2) the Creative group scores were generally higher than the other groups, but this was not consistent across spirituality domains