Assessing an Essential Skill: Finding Information in the Library.

N

23

Academic Achievement; Elementary School Students; Elementary Secondary Education; Foreign Countries; Library Instruction; Library Skills; Secondary School Students; Sex Differences; Test Construction

Two instruments were developed to elicit information about students' abilities and their instructional needs in finding information in a library. Tests of student skills were developed through a series of empirical trials and reviews. The third trial of the test was carried out by using whole classes selected randomly to yield two classes from four schools for each test. Results show that the developed elementary (grades 5 and 6) and intermediate (grades 7 and 8) tests are sufficiently reliable to proceed to national standardization. The tests for secondary school students has many difficult items, and will require further developmental trials before national standardization. Test results show that girls score higher and are rated higher than boys, and that students in high-performance schools ("high decile") score better than those at low and middle levels of performance. Older students also tend to do better than younger ones. The tests seem to be moving in the right direction in terms of their ability to discriminate reliably among candidates, and they should permit teachers to make informed decisions about the learning needs of a wide variety of students. (Contains nine tables, four figures, and two references.) (SLD)

1999

ED429995