The Professional Development Indexer helps you diagnose your needs in specific science content areas and provide suggestions of NSTA e-PD resources and opportunities you may want to consider as you plan your professional development (PD). The Indexer does not assign a grade or present a score to the questions you answer, but saves a list of recommended resources for later review.
This paper presents a detailed description of the procedures employed by NSTA to develop valid and reliable PD Indexer content-specific multiple-choice assessment items:
Developing a Web-Based Mechanism for Assessing Teacher Science Content Knowledge Journal of Science Teacher Education, 22 (1), March 2011. Authors: Byers, A.; Koba, S.; Sherman, G.; Scheppke, J.; Bolus, R.
You have two options for indexing your PD needs. First, you may review all of the content areas across any of the three science disciplines provided: physical, life, or earth and space science by clicking the "Diagnose All Subjects" button with a specific discipline. This will present you with five questions randomly selected from each content area for that discipline. Or, you may select one or more content areas within a discipline by checking the appropriate boxes and then selecting the "Diagnose Selected Subjects" button. This will present 10 questions from each science content area selected.
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