Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 8, Issue 1, Article 7 (June, 2007) Hong Kwen BOO Primary science assessment item setters' misconceptions concerning biological science concepts Previous Contents Next

Discussion

The example assessment items discussed in this paper demonstrate some of the misconceptions held by question setters concerning basic biological science concepts.

Whilst some of the misconceptions may be due to poor item crafting - particularly ambiguity posed by the framing of the items and the failure to anticipate the different possible perspectives that the students might have, it has been found through interactions with teachers in various informal settings that these misconceptions are indeed held by some teachers.

This would support the suggestion by many researchers that teachers can be the source of many of the misconceptions held by students.

Many in-service teachers in the primary schools either do not have a science background or are only practicing science teaching for a small part of their teaching time (being generalist teachers who are also involved in the teaching of English Language and Mathematics). It would therefore be beneficial for primary teachers to attend in-service programs and practical science workshops where they could explore these basic concepts in greater detail.

Poorly crafted assessment items not only invalidate the assessment process but disadvantage students, particularly the more creative ones, who are often able to see the correct concept or see alternate views of the problem not considered by the question setter but who have no means in an MCQ item to convey their understanding. One way of addressing this issue is to add a second tier to the MCQ, where the added second tier is an open-ended segment which allows students to explain their reasons for choosing a particular option as their answers given in the first part of the MCQ (Boo, 2003; Boo & Ang, 2005).

It is recommended that all test items be subject to rigorous quality review to ensure correct expression of science concepts in the questions and in the intended answers. Quality review is particularly important in the case of MCQ items which provide no means for the student to express alternate ideas to those held by the teacher and articulated in the question. In many schools, external review has been demonstrated to be highly cost effective in surfacing teacher misconceptions and improving the quality of assessment items.