What challenges might exist in the creation of assessments for a social studies or science class that might not exist in a mathematics class why?

Answer 1

Math is a concrete subject, especially during the middle school and high school time. You learn formulas, apply the formulas and receive an answer. If the answer is correct the pupil grasps the use of the formula and thus assessing is relatively easy.

Social studies, being a social science, isn't concrete. It is more open to personal interpretation based on world view. With a person's world view being shaped by their individual experiences within their individual life there can be no definite answer and their comprehension is based on the ability to synthesize the information and draw valid conclusions from it. Examples can be seen abound in the news. "Was the US justified in invading Iraq? At the time and now?" "What are the stances of pro-life and pro-choice, which do you agree with and why?" Thus to assess a social studies class it would take more time being that a teacher couldn't just slip a scantron into a machine and wait for the results. The teacher would also have to be conscious of their world view and not allow it to create an ethnocentric bias when grading the papers (ex. If the teacher is pro-choice and the student wrote a well informed paper on pro-life.)

Science can go either way depending on the focus of the class; to understand the concepts on a practical level; or to understand them on a theoretical level. I already wrote more than most would want to read so I'll end here.

Answer

Mathematics has one answer, all the time. Social studies and some sciences have more room for opinion as well as nearly constant updates on the facts.

You can develop a multiple choice test for all three; but only in the math test will the answer be absolutely right. In social studies and science, care has to be taken with word choices since there can be misleading nuances--you do want the student to be able to answer the test correctly. Also, people tend to learn while taking tests (!) so you could take a student from correctly understanding the topic to having a skewed understanding.

With an essay test, you could reasonably test on the steps of discovery through an experiment, history, or a written set of examples supporting a main point.

The questions should be carefully written to elicit what the lectures, book reading and other learning experiences pointed out--not opinions. Good teaching does teach students to make logical points in an essay and marking the papers in response to that is worthwhile. I usually would give a point to each example.

Note that every once in awhile, the whole class may fail to answer a question correctly, which may be due to the way the question was written, even if it makes sense to the writer. Simply give everyone credit and re-teach the item. Or, as one of my professors did, rewrite the question to suit the answers you received.