Do students have enough scientific literacy? A computerized testlet instrument for measuring students’ scientific literacy

The assessment on students’ skills is influenced not only by the ability to use the skills but also by the knowledge of a particular subject in which the skills are used. Scientific literacy in chemistry is the students’ skill influenced by the knowledge of chemistry subject. Students must link the knowledge of science in chemistry and the ability to solve the problem. This kind of skill is rather difficult to assess. For those, the aim of this study was to investigate the students’ scientific literacy in the chemistry subject. The purpose-designed survey method was used in this study. A total of 151 students consisting of 91 female and 60 male were selected as respondents in this study. These students were purposively selected from 3 representative schools in Madiun, East Java. The testlet instrument consisted of 30 multiple choice questions that had been validated and arranged into scientific literacy skill indicators in the chemical bonds topic. The scientific literacy skills indicators were analyzed including nominal, conceptual, functional, structural, multidimensional, and applications. The computerized testlet instruments are constructed hierarchically based on the concept of chemical bonds. The result of this study indicated that students have good scientific literacy skills on the nominal indicators, meaning that they can recognize scientific terms but do not have much understanding of science concepts. However, they have poor performance on application indicators, which means that they are still not able to apply the knowledge they get to different problems.