The development and validation of Grade Eight physics test in the K-12 science curriculum

• Main Author: Lorenzana, Arnel A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2016
• Subjects: Physics > Study and teaching; Science > Study and teaching; Curriculum-based assessment; Concept learning
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/5315
• Institution: De La Salle University

This was a study on the development and validation of Grade Eight Physics Test (GEPT) to assess the mean performance level of grade eight students on general physics courses. More specifically, this study had the following objectives (1) Develop a grade eight physics test to assess the mean performance level of high school students under the K-12 Basic Education Curriculum of DepEd (2) Establish the reliability, structure validity, content validity and distracters acceptability of the test (3) Identify misconceptions of students on the grade eight physics content. The development and validation of the GEPT was divided into five phases: (1) Planning and development of the test (2) Validation of the test (3) Pilot testing (4) Final testing and (5) Identifying students misconception. The final form of the Grade Eight Physics Test was composed of a 40-item 2-tier multiple (4)-choice test. The validated test measures the six key contents of the grade eight physics curriculum based on the new K-12 Science Curriculum (DepEd, 2012). The content areas were Newtons law work, power and energy heat and temperature sounds electricity and colors of light. The data gathered through validation procedures revealed the following findings: (1) The Grade Eight Physics Test has a reasonable representation of the constructs in the grade eight physics curriculum. It has a good distribution across the cognitive domain in Blooms taxonomy and promotes higher order thinking skills. (2) The test has a good structure (0.84) and content (0.91) validity and the panel of experts has high agreement on it, 0.934 and 0.977 respectively. (3) The standard error of measurement of the test is relatively low both for the pilot (2.82) and final (2.84) form. This shows that the test can iii identify the range of the score of the student with accuracy and precession. (4) The test is moderately difficult. The average mean performance level for the pilot testing is 0.46 while final testing is 0.40 suggesting above average difficulty especially in the final testing. (5) The test can discriminate between low performing and high performing students based on the average discrimination index of 0.36 and 0.35 for pilot and final testing respectively. (6) The test has a high internal reliability coefficient of 0.878 and 0.824 for the pilot and final testing. This suggests that the test is a very good for a classroom test. (7) The test can identify misconceptions among students in the content of grade eight physics. It also confirms the universality of misconception as stated in different literatures. The GEPT is a valid and reliable tool in measuring the mean performance level of eight grade students on general physics courses and can be used in other similar purposes. GEPT has its limitations. Further study is recommended on the psychometric property of the GEPT using other methods of item analysis like IRT. It is also recommended that the GEPT should be tested to a larger and more diverse population.