Abstract
Understanding item difficulty in science concepts is essential for teachers in teaching and learning to avoid student misconceptions. This study aims to evaluate the patterns of item difficulty estimates in science concepts exploring student misconceptions across physics, biology, and chemistry and to explore differential item functioning (DIF) items in the developed diagnostic test on the basis of gender and grade. Participants were drawn from 856 students (52.3% females and 47.7% males) comprising senior high school students from 11 th to 12 th grades and pre-service science teachers in the West Kalimantan province, Indonesia. Out of 16 science concepts categorized, the common science concepts causing misconceptions among students were investigated to understand item difficulty patterns using Rasch measurement. The findings of this study evaluated that 32 developed items are valid and reliable whereby the item difficulty estimates ranged from −5.13 logits to 5.06 logits. Chemistry is the scientific discipline with the highest mean logits than other disciplines. There is no significant item difficulty estimate across the science disciplines. We also found DIF issues in one item based on gender and four items based on grade. This study contributes a significant role in mapping and informing item difficulty patterns in science concepts to tackle teachers’ problems in assessing and teaching science concepts to improve the students’ science performance. Future studies and limitations are also discussed.
Highlights
Science concepts are critical elements in explaining and understanding natural phenomena across all science disciplines
Wandersee et al (1994) analyzed 103 studies related to misconceptions in the paradigm of science concepts, Gurel et al (2015) found 273 articles about misconceptions across science disciplines and instruments to assess students’ understanding, and Soeharto et al (2019) found 111 articles from 2015 to 2019 that focused on student misconceptions across the disciplines of physics, biology, and chemistry
Thirty-two item questions were adapted developed in the form of a two-tier multiple-choice diagnostic test with eight items is adapted from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2012), two items adapted from (Csapo, 1998), 23 items newly designed by authors
Summary
Science concepts are critical elements in explaining and understanding natural phenomena across all science disciplines. Our study evaluates item difficulty estimates using a standardized instrument to assess the distributed science concepts misconceptions to students across the science disciplines using Rasch measurement and explores DIF. This study will fill the gap in empirical research that provides evidence related to students’ difficulties in understanding science concepts across disciplines, especially science concepts that generate misconceptions in students on the basis of key concepts in the findings of previous research findings by Soeharto et al (2019). This study will target both groups, students at secondary school and teachers who have completed pre-service and are undergoing education based on the Indonesian science core curriculum
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