ASSESSING SCIENCE TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE ABOUT INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES: DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A MCQS TEST

Abstract

Effective science teaching requires strong critical-thinking, problem-solving, communication, collaboration, and creative skills. Effective science teaching can only be ensured if the teacher, the key pivot of the change, is well-acquainted with content as well as methodology. Therefore, classroom practices are becoming more focused on the delivery of instruction through innovative instructional strategies. On the other hand, instructional planning and strategies are the key facets of quality teaching. Most of the scales developed for measuring science teachers’ knowledge about instructional strategies had rarely focused on these aspects. This study aims to design and validate an MCQ test to evaluate the instructional strategy knowledge of science teachers. The test, comprising 44 items, was administered to 200 science teachers at the secondary school level. To establish the validity and reliability of the MCQ test, the discrimination index, difficulty index, distractor efficiency, and the Kuder–Richardson Formula 20 20 (ρKR20) were employed. The final MCQs test consisted of 31 items. The ρKR20 score obtained was 0.85, showing that the test is highly reliable.