Recently, a growing awareness of the relationship between assessment and learning has resulted in several major critiques of existing practice and proposals for reform in science education at national and regional levels. One initiative advocates the use of carefully constructed performance tasks that give students opportunities to demonstrate their understanding as they would in the world outside of school. The purpose of this study was to explore relationships among school students' (n = 189) acquisition of meaningful understandings of protein synthesis. Students were tested before and after protein synthesis instruction using a multiple choice assessment format and an open-ended assessment format. The assessment instrument was designed to measure students' interrelated understanding of protein synthesis. An independent t-test analysis was conducted on the posttests to measure retention of factual information and gender differences. Analysis of student-generated analogies also revealed unique patterns in students' understandings of this topic. This research provides information for educators on students' acquisition of meaningful understandings of protein synthesis and has many implications for educators. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 1–22, 1999.
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