MAKASSAR — A team of researchers from Universitas Negeri Makassar, Zulqifli Alqadri, Yulianti Yusal, Musawwir Usman, and Amalia Rahmadani, has successfully developed a new assessment tool designed to measure sustainability knowledge through authentic energy issues among pre-service science teachers. This initiative responds to the urgent need for future educators to comprehend the intricate connections between environmental, economic, and social domains before entering classrooms. The preliminary validation study, conducted in 2026, marks an essential step toward standardizing sustainability diagnostics in teacher preparation programs.
Existing literature suggests that higher education evaluation systems often fail to monitor multi-dimensional sustainability literacy effectively. University students typically conceptualize sustainability through a narrow environmental lens, frequently overlooking economic trade-offs and social justice implications. Energy issues—encompassing fossil fuels, carbon emissions, and renewable energy transitions—serve as a highly productive framework for assessment because they force test-takers to navigate complex socio-scientific realities rather than relying on basic factual recall.
The development process employed an instrument design model coupled with empirical pilot testing to evaluate structural performance. The initial administration involved 32 science education students who completed a 15-item multiple-choice test. Data generated from the pilot study were evaluated via classical item analysis, focusing on item difficulty parameters, item discrimination values, and internal consistency estimation using the Kuder-Richardson 20 formula.
The preliminary data revealed moderate student performance, with an overall mean score of 10.75 out of a possible 15 points. Most participant scores clustered within a restricted range between 9 and 12. Item-level metrics flagged five questions as overly easy for the targeted demographic, while the remaining ten functioned well within the moderate difficulty range. The initial reliability coefficient was recorded at 0.31, indicating that while the test shows strong diagnostic potential, further refinement regarding question phrasing and distractor options is mandatory before expansive implementation.
A critical behavioral pattern emerged when looking at performance by category. Students excelled on domain-specific items, scoring 83.33 percent correct on economic questions, 81.25 percent on environmental questions, and 76.04 percent on social questions. However, their performance plummeted to 58.85 percent correct on integrative items that required balancing multiple sustainability pillars concurrently within real-world scenarios. This disparity indicates that while future science teachers understand separate sustainability concepts, they struggle with cross-domain reasoning and systemic problem-solving.
The implications of these findings are direct and vital for teacher training academies. The low integration scores underscore the necessity of shifting science education curricula away from isolated disciplinary boundaries toward integrated socio-scientific inquiry. Faculty members can utilize this assessment framework as a diagnostic tool to pinpoint cognitive gaps in student comprehension early on. Addressing these gaps ensures that future teachers graduate with the systemic capacity required to guide younger generations through the structural realities of the global energy transition.
Author Profile:
Zulqifli Alqadri is a researcher at Universitas Negeri Makassar.
Yulianti Yusal is a researcher at Universitas Negeri Makassar.
Musawwir Usman is a researcher at Universitas Negeri Makassar.
Amalia Rahmadani is a researcher at Universitas Negeri Makassar.
Research Source:
Assessment of Sustainability Knowledge on Energy Issues: Development and Validation of an Instrument for Pre-Service Science Teachers, East Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (EAJMR), 2026.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55927/eajmr.v5i5.97
URL: https://journaleajmr.my.id/index.php/eajmr
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