This study aimed to develop a standardised instrument for diagnosing science misconceptions in primary school children. Following a developmental research approach using the 4-D model (Define, Design, Develop, Disseminate), 100 four-tier multiple choice items were constructed. Content validity was established through expert evaluation by six…

Reflective thinking skills are thought to be an important factor affecting the success of problem solving both routine and non-routine science problems. This research aimed to determine the relationship between eighth-grade students' reflective thinking skills toward problem-solving and their level of solving routine and non-routine science…

Students experience many difficulties learning the fundamental relationships in Newtonian mechanics, partly due to preexisting mental models that originate from their everyday lives. These preconceptions often persist even after instruction in mechanics and lead to a supposed incompatibility between physics lessons in school and personal…

General chemistry students need to understand the concept of intermolecular forces and use them to predict the properties of materials. To do this, they must create symbolic representations of molecules, relate these to physical observations, and explain them using submicroscopic theoretical constructs. When these concepts are taught separately,…

The Lawson classroom test of scientific reasoning is a quite popular and widely used tool that measures the level and development of the student's scientific reasoning skills. In this contribution, the results of this test for the N=446 students of the Faculty of Science Palacký University Olomouc from the years 2018-2020 at the beginning of their…

Dealing with multiple external representations (MERs) in science education is the key to students' understanding of science communication and becoming scientifically literate. It is generally accepted that learning scientific concepts, processes, and principles requires understanding and interacting with MERs. Science can be understood as a…

Item response theory (IRT) has so many advantages than its precedent Classical Test Theory (CTT) such as non-changing item parameters, ability parameter estimations free from the items. However, in order to get these advantages, some assumptions should be met and they are; unidimensionality, normality and local independence. However, it is not…

We present the Electricity and Magnetism Conceptual Assessment (EMCA), a new assessment aligned with second-semester introductory physics courses. Topics covered include electrostatics, electric fields, circuits, magnetism, and induction. We have two motives for writing a new assessment. First, we find other assessments such as the Brief…

The study aims to examine whether differential item function is displayed in three different test forms that have item orders of random and sequential versions (easy-to-hard and hard-to-easy), based on Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT) methods and bearing item difficulty levels in mind. In the correlational research, the…

We examined multimodality (the representation of information in multiple semiotic modes) in the context of international test comparisons. Using Program of International Student Assessment (PISA)-2009 data, we examined the correlation of the difficulty of science items and the complexity of their illustrations. We observed statistically…

Background: While illustrations are widely used in international test comparisons, very scant research has been conducted on their design and on their influence on student performance. It is not clear how the features of illustration act in combination supporting students' access to the content of items or increasing their interpretation demands.…

The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of content knowledge on students' socio-scientific argumentation in the Swedish National Assessment in biology, chemistry and physics for 12-year-olds. In Sweden, the assessment of socio-scientific argumentation has been a major part of the National Assessment during three consecutive years and…

The Anatomy Learning Experiences Questionnaire (ALEQ) was designed by Smith and Mathias to explore students' perceptions and experiences of learning anatomy. In this study, the psychometric properties of a slightly altered 34-item ALEQ (ALEQ-34) were evaluated, and correlations with learning outcomes investigated, by surveying first- and…

Since 2010, the whole national cohort Key Stage 2 (KS2) National Curriculum test in science in England has been replaced with a sampling test taken by pupils at the age of 11 from a nationally representative sample of schools annually. The study reported in this paper compares the performance of different subgroups of the samples (classified by…

The Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2011) outlines core disciplinary ideas, scientific practices and cross-cutting ideas as dimensions on which to base science education. This study outlines the use of core ecological ideas and two scientific practices as a way to examine the cognitive complexity of released large-scale assessment items…