The Assessment of Practical Intelligence on Science and its Relations to School Performance by High School Students

• Main Authors: Ching-Ching Chang, 張靖卿
• Other Authors: 吳武典
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/29138418234192384630

博士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 特殊教育學系 === 93 === The purposes of this study were twofold: (1) to develop instruments for measuring practical intelligence, and (2) to explore the relationship between practical intelligence on science and school performance by high school students. Participants consisted of regular students from grades 10 to 11 in public high schools as well as their gifted peers. The “Practical Science Ability Test”(PSAT) and the “Inventory of Tacit Knowledge on Science”(ITKS) were developed and standardized for the purpose. In PSAT, there involve math and science subtests. Both content validity and discriminative validity were established for the PSAT, and its internal consistency and test-retest reliability were found acceptable. The PSAT was standardized through the norm group of 1,263 high school students. The ITKS contains three subtests: managing self, managing others, and managing task. The ITKS also showed adequate content, construct and criterion-related validities, and acceptable internal and test-retest reliabilities. Based on Sternberg's theory of practical intelligence, the researcher proposed a relationship model of practical intelligence on science (i.e., practical abilities and tacit knowledge on science) and school performance (i.e., achievement and school adjustment), which was first tested on the subjects mentioned above via a structural equation modeling. The result showed that the observed data fitted the theoretical model. The model was again tested by the goodness of fit of the subjects under different invariance hypotheses. The result revealed that the relationship between practical intelligence on science and school performance of gifted students was different from that of the regular ones. The primary models of two samples were modified, and the results showed that the modified models provided a better fit to the observed data. Main conclusions were made as follows based on the findings of the two studies: 1.The PSAT could be used to evaluate that to which extent the high school students apply principles in math and science to solve practical problems in real life; 2.The ITKS could be used to measure the tacit knowledge on science of high school students; 3.The relationship model between practical intelligence on science and school performance of gifted students was different from that of regular ones: (1)The school achievement indicators of gifted high school students were more variable in terms of academic achievement in math, science, and other field of study and competitions than that of their regular counterparts; (2)Gifted students’ practical abilities on science were highly related to their school achievement; (3)Though armed with tacit knowledge as perspective scientific experts, gifted students failed to show the impact of the knowledge on both achievement and school adjustment; yet for the regular students, the tacit knowledge on science did show significant impact on school adjustment; (4)For the regular students, there involved no significant relationship between practical abilities on science and tacit knowledge; however, it did show significant but little relationship between the two variables for the gifted students.