Abstract
Instruments for assessing secondary students’ conceptual understanding of core concepts in biology are needed by educational practitioners and researchers alike. Most instruments available for secondary biology (years 9 to 12) focus only on highly specific biological concepts instead of multiple core concepts. This study describes the development of a 25-item instrument designed to fill this gap, the High School Biology Concept Inventory (HS-BCI). The HS-BCI not only assesses student knowledge of key biological concepts but also alternative conceptions. Using Rasch theory, the initial instrument was constructed from a pool of 61 instrument items using test results from 1015 students. The final 25-item instrument was validated with 1955 students. The results provide reliability and validity evidence for the HS-BCI. The findings suggest that it can be utilized to assess both conceptual knowledge and alternative conceptions.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Article number | em2048 |
Journal | Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education |
Volume | 17 |
Issue number | 12 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Author contributions: All authors have sufficiently contributed to the study, and agreed with the results and conclusions. Funding: This research was partially funded by a grant under the federally funded Math Science Partnership State Grants Program, under Grant number OH160505 and OH160511. Acknowledgements: We would like to thank James Roth for his work on the illustrations for the HS-BCI. Declaration of interest: No conflict of interest is declared by authors. Data sharing: The HS-BCI is available either upon request from the corresponding author or in online supplemental materials of EJMSTE.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021. by the authors; licensee Modestum. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License
Keywords
- Alternative conceptions
- Biology
- Concept inventories
- Instrument construction
- Rasch