Recent instructional reforms in science education bring a new vision that aims to move science teaching away from a focus on discrete facts covered at a superficial level to a focus on a smaller number of disciplinary core ideas that can be explored in depth. The success of these reforms depends on the instructional quality in science classrooms. Our goal in this paper is to introduce an instructional quality assessment tool that can provide a window into the extent to which students learn science through rigorous opportunities as envisioned in these reforms. We present the conceptual grounding of the tool and its development process with findings from a pilot test. Data collection involved in‐class assignments, students' work, and video‐records from nine science teachers' classrooms at a local school. The analysis revealed that the instructional quality assessment tool can reliably capture the variation in rigor in science classrooms. Specifically, the tool has the potential to assess elements of ambitious science teaching focusing on the rigor of tasks and talk that shape students' high‐level thinking and sensemaking in science classrooms. The article concludes by discussing future directions for the further development of this tool and the ways in which it can be used for instructional improvement and teacher learning.

中文翻译：

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雄心勃勃的改革时代评估科学教学质量的初步研究

最近的科学教育教学改革带来了新的愿景，旨在使科学教学从对表述的离散事实的关注转向对少数可以深入探讨的学科核心思想的关注。这些改革的成功取决于科学教室的教学质量。我们本文的目标是引入一种教学质量评估工具，该工具可以为学生提供通过改革所设想的严格机会学习科学的程度的窗口。我们通过先导测试的结果介绍了该工具的概念基础及其开发过程。数据收集涉及班级作业，学生的工作以及来自本地学校的9个理科教师教室的录像带。分析表明，教学质量评估工具可以可靠地捕获科学教室中严格性的变化。具体而言，该工具具有评估雄心勃勃的科学教学要素的潜力，这些要素侧重于任务的严格性，并通过对话来塑造学生在科学教室中的高级思维和感性认识。本文最后讨论了该工具进一步发展的未来方向以及将其用于教学改进和教师学习的方式。