2. Centre for Earth and Space Research, University of Coimbra (CITEUC), Portugal)

Abstract: The evaluation of instructional practices (IPs) is generally a poorly defined process, either in its qualitative or quantitative components. Often, an IP is evaluated by its impact on students’ academic success, which is usually measured by students’ grades in summative assessment tests. This, however, may be a biased process because, in general, the teacher(s) who conceives(e) the instructional practice also participates(e) in its implementation and in students’ final evaluation. Therefore, not always a positive correlation between an instructional practice and students’ academic success should be used as an argument to validate the instructional practice. It is nonetheless very advantageous to know the reasons for the success/failure of IPs, as this information is crucial to correct any deficiencies or to improve critical aspects. For this reason, it is essential to assess students' opinion/attitude towards the IPs that are intended to be evaluated. In this work, we describe a methodology for evaluating IPs based on a five-point Likert scale psychometric questionnaire, in which reliability is measured by Cronbach's alpha coefficient. In order to exemplify the application of this IP evaluation methodology, we analyzed a study case of cooperative learning IP implemented in an introductory Physics course, taught at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto.