The purpose of the thesis is to develop diagnostic test, to identify potential misconceptions of selected chemical concepts in students in the 7th grade of elementary school, in the context of natural science course.
Teaching science is complex, mainly due to abstractness of natural science, including chemical concepts. Incorrectly presented abstract concepts can lead to a numerous misconceptions. Research has shown that misconceptions appear at science courses e.g. chemistry and natural science. Not only the teacher has an important role in learning, but also the individual and his ability of visualization of natural science, including chemical concepts.
A teacher can check misconceptions by verbal verification or he can use diagnostic tests. Such diagnostic tests are checking understanding of selected key natural science concepts. For this purpose we use two-tier, three-tier or four-tier tests which include multiple–choice tasks with one correct anwser, in addition to these tasks they also include further explanation of the selected answer e.g. "Explain why you think so?" If the chosen answer must be explained, we avoid the possibility of students guessing the right answer. In three or four-part tasks we additionally ask students about how sure they are, that each part or even the whole task has been properly solved.
Teaching natural science in general, different misconceptions that students have and which criterion - metric characteristics must exam have to be described as a good measuring instrument, is described in the first part of the thesis.
The following is an analysis of diagnostic test: (1) the difficulty of the tasks, (2) objectivity, (3) validity, (4) sensitivity and (5) how economical and appropriate diagnostic test is.
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