The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and Validation
Science is an inherently quantitative endeavor, and general education science courses are taken by a majority of college students. As such, they are a powerful venue for advancing students’ skills and attitudes toward mathematics. This article reports on the development and validation of the Quantit...
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2015-07-01
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doaj-fed01808244641019958b89368d367a02020-11-25T00:48:40ZengNational Numeracy NetworkNumeracy1936-46601936-46602015-07-01822http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/1936-4660.8.2.2The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and ValidationKatherine B. Follette0Donald W. McCarthy1Erin Dokter2Sanlyn Buxner3Edward Prather4Kavli Institute of Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford UniversityUniversity of ArizonaUniversity of ArizonaUniversity of ArizonaUniversity of ArizonaScience is an inherently quantitative endeavor, and general education science courses are taken by a majority of college students. As such, they are a powerful venue for advancing students’ skills and attitudes toward mathematics. This article reports on the development and validation of the Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, a numeracy assessment instrument designed for college-level general education science students. It has been administered to more than four thousand students over eight semesters of refinement. We show that the QuaRCS is able to distinguish varying levels of quantitative literacy and present performance statistics for both individual items and the instrument as a whole. Responses from a survey of forty-eight Astronomy and Mathematics educators show that these two groups share views regarding which quantitative skills are most important in the contexts of science literacy and educated citizenship, and the skills assessed with the QuaRCS are drawn from these rankings. The fully-developed QuaRCS assessment was administered to nearly two thousand students in nineteen general education science courses and one STEM major course in early 2015, and results reveal that the instrument is valid for both populations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/numeracy/vol8/iss2/art2/quantitative literacyscience literacyassessment |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Katherine B. Follette Donald W. McCarthy Erin Dokter Sanlyn Buxner Edward Prather |
spellingShingle |
Katherine B. Follette Donald W. McCarthy Erin Dokter Sanlyn Buxner Edward Prather The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and Validation Numeracy quantitative literacy science literacy assessment |
author_facet |
Katherine B. Follette Donald W. McCarthy Erin Dokter Sanlyn Buxner Edward Prather |
author_sort |
Katherine B. Follette |
title |
The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and Validation |
title_short |
The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and Validation |
title_full |
The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and Validation |
title_fullStr |
The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and Validation |
title_full_unstemmed |
The Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, 1: Development and Validation |
title_sort |
quantitative reasoning for college science (quarcs) assessment, 1: development and validation |
publisher |
National Numeracy Network |
series |
Numeracy |
issn |
1936-4660 1936-4660 |
publishDate |
2015-07-01 |
description |
Science is an inherently quantitative endeavor, and general education science courses are taken by a majority of college students. As such, they are a powerful venue for advancing students’ skills and attitudes toward mathematics. This article reports on the development and validation of the Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) Assessment, a numeracy assessment instrument designed for college-level general education science students. It has been administered to more than four thousand students over eight semesters of refinement. We show that the QuaRCS is able to distinguish varying levels of quantitative literacy and present performance statistics for both individual items and the instrument as a whole. Responses from a survey of forty-eight Astronomy and Mathematics educators show that these two groups share views regarding which quantitative skills are most important in the contexts of science literacy and educated citizenship, and the skills assessed with the QuaRCS are drawn from these rankings. The fully-developed QuaRCS assessment was administered to nearly two thousand students in nineteen general education science courses and one STEM major course in early 2015, and results reveal that the instrument is valid for both populations.
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topic |
quantitative literacy science literacy assessment |
url |
http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/numeracy/vol8/iss2/art2/ |
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