Conceptual Understanding of Three Dimensions of Earth Processes in General Education and Introductory Courses: Test Development and Validation

该项目属于计划指导方针的新开发轨道。正在开发一种评估工具，既可用作诊断工具，又可用于衡量教学效果，主要侧重于学生对地球科学的概念理解。概念理解和变革之所以成为目标，有两个原因。首先，概念理解既意味着对内容的熟悉，也意味着将其应用于复杂问题的能力。其次，许多研究表明，先前的知识对于理解可能与教育学一样重要。因此，学生对地球系统的个人理解可能会影响他们理解和保留他们所接触到的正式地球科学的方式。这项研究的主要目标是向全国各地的地学教师传播一种可靠和有效的评估工具，用于普通教育和地球科学入门课程，作为诊断学生先入为主的概念和评估课程有效性的一种手段。因此，这项测试可用作跨课程、跨大学的评估工具，也可用作比较各种教学风格和其他变量的手段，包括与年龄和性别等特征有关的不同学生成绩。这一目标将通过以下方式实现：1。通过全面的文献搜索和与学生的访谈，确定地质过程的替代概念。地球科学涵盖了一系列跨学科的研究，我们将重点缩小到三个维度：地壳(包括地形和地理表达)、地球内部和地球随时间的变化。大约70个学生面谈将在四个不同学生群体的不同机构进行；2.开发一个使用普遍存在的误解作为干扰的多项选择概念评估工具。这些误解将从上面描述的学生访谈中分类；对评估工具进行定性和统计验证，以确保作为比较工具的稳健性。我们将确保这项测试的有效性，即测试测量特定特征的能力，以及可靠性，测试项目的内部一致性和测试的重复性。可靠性和效度将通过初学者、教育工作者和专家地球科学家的初步试验以及项目反应理论统计来确保。涉及地质学基本概念的评估工具的可用性将对有兴趣评估地球科学入门和非主要课程的大学教职员工来说将是非常宝贵的。此外，使用误解作为干扰，允许感兴趣的教职员工将预测用作诊断工具，以确定他们的学生持有的替代想法的种类。然后，教师可以修改课程结构，专门针对这些先入为主的概念。最后，标准测试的可用性将允许地学教师比较不同大学的课程，这样做就可以提供一个基础，以比较不同的教师、教学方法、课程和技术。如果我们想要真正回答“地球科学课堂上什么管用？”这类评估是至关重要的。

This project falls into the New Development track of the program guidelines. An assessment tool is being developed that can be used as both a diagnostic tool and a measurement of instructional effects, with primary focus on student conceptual understanding in the geosciences. Conceptual understanding and change are being targetted for two reasons. First, conceptual understanding implies both a familiarity with content and the ability to apply it to complex questions. Second, a number of studies have suggested that prior knowledge can be as important to understanding as pedagogy. As such, students' personal understanding of Earth systems may impact the way in which they understand and retain the formal geoscience they are exposed to. The primary goal of this study is the dissemination of a reliable and valid assessment tool to geoscience faculty around the nation, for use in general education and introductory geoscience courses, as a means of both diagnosing student preconceptions and assessing one aspect of course effectiveness. This test can thus be used as a cross-course, cross-university assessment instrument and as a means for comparing a variety of instructional styles and other variables, including disparate student outcomes related to characteristics such as age and gender. This goal will be achieved by: 1. Identification of alternative conceptions of geological processes through a comprehensive literature search and interviews with students. Geoscience covers a range of interdisciplinary studies, and we have narrowed our focus to three dimensions: Earth's crust (including topographic expression and geographic expression), Earth's interior, and Earth through time. Roughly 70 student interviews will be conducted at four different institutions with dissimilar student populations;2. Development of a multiple-choice conceptual assessment tool using commonly held misconceptions as distractors. These misconceptions will be catalogued from the studentinterviews described above; and3. Qualitative and statistical validation of the assessment tool, to ensure robustness as a comparative instrument. We will ensure both validity, the ability of a test to measure a specific characteristic, and reliability, the internal consistency of the test items and test reproducibility, of this test. Reliability and validity will be ensured through initial piloting with novice students, educators and expert geoscientists, and Item Response Theory statistics.The availability of an assessment tool involving fundamental conceptions in geology will be invaluable for university faculty interested in assessing introductory and non-major courses in the geosciences. Additionally, the use of misconceptions as distractors allows interested faculty to use the pre-test as a diagnostic tool, to determine the kinds of alternative ideas held by their students. Teachers can then modify course structures to specifically target these preconceptions. Finally, the availability of a standard test will allow geoscience faculty to compare courses at different universities, and in so doing allow a basis by which different instructors, teaching methodologies, curriculum, and technologies can be compared. This type of evaluation is critical if we are ever truly going to answer the question "What works in the geoscience classroom?"