Scientific literacy is important for helping students respond to global sustainability challenges. However, existing scientific literacy instruments have not fully integrated Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and have limited psychometric evidence. This study aimed to develop an ESD-aligned scientific literacy instrument for pre-service physics teachers and examine its preliminary measurement quality using the Rasch model. The study used a research and development design based on the 4D model. The instrument consisted of 45 contextual items related to sustainability issues, including climate change, energy, and environmental problems. Six experts evaluated the content validity of the items using Aiken’s V. The instrument was then administered to 30 pre-service physics teachers. The data were analyzed using the Rasch model with Winsteps. The results showed high content validity, with Aiken’s V values ranging from 0.89 to 1.00. The Rasch analysis showed a person reliability of 0.80 and a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.84. However, item reliability was 0.45 and item separation was 0.90, indicating that the item calibration was still preliminary. The item-fit results showed Outfit MNSQ values of 0.58–1.37 and Outfit ZSTD values of −1.55 to 1.84. Point Measure Correlation values ranged from 0.17 to 0.48, indicating that some items had weaker relationships with the overall measure. The Wright Map showed imperfect alignment between person ability and item difficulty. PCA of residuals showed 16.8% raw variance explained by measures and a first-contrast eigenvalue of 4.40, which did not provide strong evidence of unidimensionality. Overall, the findings provide preliminary evidence that the instrument has potential for assessing ESD-aligned scientific literacy. Further studies with larger and more diverse samples are needed to confirm its measurement quality.
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