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Development of Conceptual Status Test to Examine Conceptual Change in Classrooms

Determining students’, conceptual status can help teachers to examine whether conceptual change occurs in classrooms. Several methods such as interview and classroom observation have been used to examine conceptual status, but there were the considerations about the difficulty in classroom practice. The purpose of this study was to develop the conceptual status written test which allowed students to express their own ideas through their writing. In the test, students read an argument presenting the scientific conception and the alternative conception, and decide which explanation is more acceptable. If the scientific conception isintelligible, plausible, and fruitful in high level to the students, their responses will support the scientific conception. The conceptual status test was administered to 47 middle school students who had completed learning units on plant biology. The contents taught in the learning units were the same contents as in the test included cell function, photosynthesis, diffusion and osmosis. The reliability of test scores analyzed by using Cronbach’,s Alpha was .79. Item difficulty index ranked from 0.29 to 0.71, and item discrimination ranked from ,0.29 to 0.75. The determination of student’,s conceptual status was reported and discussed.

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