Testing the psychometric properties of a research tool for determining the level pupils' knowledge of arthropods in an ecological and systematic approach to selected schools
Abstract
The content of the project presents experience with the compilation of didactic test so as to provide an overview of the knowledge of pupils in the 6th, 7th and 8th classes, taking into account different approaches to teaching biology. The psychometric properties of the research tool are described here: reliability, validity, sensitivity of items and value of difficulty.
Pilot testing of the analytical tool was performed on pupils in 6th, 7th and 8th grades at the beginning of the school year (2019/2020). The applicability of the pilot didactic test was verified at three primary schools and one lower grammar school, a total of 342 respondents in Prague and the Central Bohemian Region.
The aim was to verify the arrangement of the content of the analytical tool and to verify the psychometric properties within the years. Reliability and validity have been demonstrated.
The reliability of the tool in all tested years reached acceptable values in the range of 0.6 - 0.8. This value almost corresponds to the ideal values of the correlation coefficient (0.8-1).
The results of the pilot measurement showed that the author's research tool contained 3 difficult tasks, which were challenging for all respondents in both approaches. Within the individual years, it turned out that the author's research tool was more difficult for students in the systematic approach than for students in the ecological approach.
Pupils in 7th and 8th grades showed significant differences in their knowledge of arthropods. Based on the results obtained from the pilot survey, the proposed research tool will be verified and subjected to modifications of tasks so that it can be used to compare the effectiveness of teaching about arthropods using ecological and systematic natural history in selected schools.