Praxis Middle School Science is designed to measure knowledge and competencies important for safe and effective beginning practice as a teacher of middle school science. Test takers have typically completed a bachelor’s degree program with appropriate coursework in science and education.

Content topics span the middle school science curriculum, including content related to (I) Nature and Impact of Science and Engineering, (II) Physical Science, (III) Life Science, and (IV) Earth and Space Science. The assessment is designed and developed through work with practicing middle school science teachers, teacher educators, and higher education content specialists to reflect the science knowledge teachers need to teach the middle school science curriculum and to reflect state and national standards, including the National Science Teaching Association Preparation Standards for middle school science. Content and practices measured reflect the Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs) and Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) established by the National Research Council in A Framework for K-12 Science Education and included in the Next Generation Science Standards.

The 125 selected-response questions measure concepts, terms, phenomena, methods, applications, data analysis, and problem solving in science. Test takers will not need to use calculators in taking this test.

The periodic table of the elements is available as a Help screen, along with a table of information that presents various physical constants and a few conversion factors among SI units. Whenever necessary, additional values of physical constants are included with the text of a question.

Test takers can expect forty percent or more of the questions on the test to integrate science content knowledge with one or more of the SEPs, listed under Science and Engineering Practices. Test takers will also find that approximately thirty percent of questions call for application of physical science content and processes within a teaching scenario or an instructional task. Such questions— designed to measure applications of science knowledge to the kinds of decisions and evaluations a teacher must make during work with students, curriculum, and instruction—situate science content questions in tasks critical for teaching.

This test may contain some questions that do not count toward your score.