Reflections of the assessment approach in science and technology program in the 4th and 5th grade textbooks

The study investigates the frequency of use of assessment and evaluation techniques in 4th and 5th grades Science and Technology textbooks. Moreover,ıt is aimed that whether or not word associatıon test which is in the science and technology program and a technique focused on recently is used appropriate to the features that it must have to.The Science and Technology textbooks, workbooks and teacher guides prepared according to the new program by private publishing houses and the Ministry of Education (MEB) in 20008-2009 educational year were examined in the scope of the study. Data required to determine the frequency use of assessment and evaluation techniques in 4th and 5th grades sciende and technology textbooks was collected through the classifications composed according to the techniques by nortgun. Related literature was researched in order to determine whether the techniques used to evaluate the process in Science and Technology program such as Word Association is used relevantly and also criteria were prepared in line with expert opinions.A qualitative method was followed in the study. The study is based on document analysis which is one of qualitative research techniques. In the first research question, the frequency of appearance of each technique was counted in each textbook prepared by private publishing houses and the Ministry of Education, the frequency of use was determined and the collected data was interpreted. In the second research question, the techniques which are used to evaluate the process in textbooks such as Word Association was evaluated by the help of scales developed through expert opinions and the collected data was interpreted to obtain results.The results of the study show that question types in all the examined textbooks geared towards assessing the product (especially questions that require a short answer and matching activities) were in the majority. It was identified that the most often used question types that assess the process were open-ended questions but it was seen that other alternative techniques were used rarely. It was especially noteworthy to see that techniques of diagnostic tree and Venn diagram do not appear in the textbooks at all. In performance activities, it was noted that the frequency of use focused on experiments but observation and interview techniques did not appear in the textbooks. When the textbooks prepared by the Ministry of Education and private publishing houses were compared with each other, it was seen that the textbooks published by private enterprises seldom carry alternative techniques that are adopted by the new approach. It can be argues that this finding is contradictory to the process-based assessment and evaluation approach that the new program adopts.When looked at the features that the techniques in textbooks was examined, it was seen that appropriate time and information related to the process of grading were?nt given in the word association tests which are only in 4th grades MEB textbooks .Besides in word association tests, it was found that there were appropriate directives at the beginning of the test, key concepts were written into the lower sub and these concepts tested tasks in the teaching program.In the light of research findings, by taking the missing parts of the techniques, some opinions were suggested about providing suitable textbooks up to the assessment and evaluation principles of the constructivist approach.