Understanding students' misconceptions and how they change is an essential part of supporting students in their science learning. This paper presents results from distractor-driven multiple-choice assessments that target students' misconceptions about energy. Over 20,000 elementary, middle and high school students from across the U.S. participated…

Energy is a core concept in the teaching of science. Therefore, it is important to know how students' thinking about energy develops so that elementary, middle, and high school students can be appropriately supported in their understanding of energy. This study tests the validity of a proposed theoretical model of students' growth of understanding…

How can assessments measure complex science learning? Although traditional, multiple-choice items can effectively measure declarative knowledge such as scientific facts or definitions, they are considered less well suited for providing evidence of science inquiry practices such as making observations or designing and conducting investigations.…

Distractor-driven multiple-choice assessment items and Rasch modeling were used as diagnostic tools to investigate students' understanding of middle school chemistry ideas. Ninety-one items were developed according to a procedure that ensured content alignment to the targeted standards and construct validity. The items were administered to 13360…