Refutation texts, rhetorical tools designed to reduce misconceptions, have garnered attention across four decades and many studies. Yet, the ability of a refutation text to change a learner's mind on a topic needs to be qualified and modulated. In this critical review, we bring attention to sources of constraints often overlooked by refutation…

The structure of two-tier testing is such that the first tier consists of a multiple-choice question and the second tier requires justifications for choices of answers made in the first tier. This study aims to evaluate two-tier tasks in "proportion" in terms of students' capacity to write and select justifications and to examine the effect of…

This paper describes the development of the CAOS test, designed to measure students' conceptual understanding of important statistical ideas, across three years of revision and testing, content validation, and reliability analysis. Results are reported from a large scale class testing and item responses are compared from pretest to posttest in…

The misconceptions related to the concepts of force and acceleration among college students are explored. Misconceptions are identified and their occurrence among a large percentage of students are observed. Provided are some implications for physics teaching and an eight-item test. (Author/YP)

Student knowledge in a subject area prior to and after instruction has traditionally been assessed by administering a pre- and post-test, usually multiple choice, though recent studies criticize the use of even the best-constructed multiple choice tests. This study assessed college freshmen's knowledge before and after a laboratory experience in…

Studies show that misconceptions about psychology are pervasive. This study examined how the strength of prior beliefs and the sources of misinformation relate to conceptual change following an introductory psychology course. Ninety introductory psychology students completed a 36-item "Psychological Information" questionnaire. Testing during the…

This review covers approximately 300 studies, including journal articles, dissertations, and papers presented at conferences. The studies are organized under these major headings: status surveys; scientific reasoning; elementary school science (student achievement, student conceptions/misconceptions, student curiosity/attitudes, teaching methods,…