The SAT, a Slovenian external assessment of knowledge, is an external examination in Slovenia, which is held at the end of the sixth and ninth grades of primary school. The SAT evaluates knowledge of mathematics, Slovene and English in the sixth grade, and mathematics, Slovene and a third subject (defined by the Ministry of Education) in the ninth grade. The purpose of the SAT is to test pupils' knowledge, to check the quality of teaching and knowledge at a national level, and to provide information for teachers and parents. The SAT consists of two parts: in the first part, there are multiple-choice tasks with a single correct answer; in the second part, the tasks are structured and composed of several open-ended sub-questions, which require short or unstructured essay answers, and it is sometimes expected to draw a structures or graphs as well. Typically, the tasks cover almost all the content of the chemistry curriculum, both of grades 8 and 9, but there are also some tasks that cover the objectives of grade 7. Pupils’ misunderstanding of the tasks can be detected in both external and internal examinations. These occur due to pupils' mental models of the problem, which do not conform to scientifically accepted definitions, but are treated by pupils as self-accepting explanations. The causes of misconceptions (including alternative concepts) are inadequate prior knowledge, which has not been corrected and correctly supplemented during the learning process.
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