Development and validation of the moon phases concept inventory for middle school

Abstract

We present the development and validation of a new assessment tool, the Moon Phases Concept Inventory for Middle School (MPCI-MS), a concept inventory about the phases of the moon targeting students aged 10 to 14 years old. Items in the questionnaire are based on a careful examination of the concept domain of phases of the moon, ideas and concepts necessary to understand the mechanism of lunar phases, as chosen by a panel of seven professional astronomers. Questions and multiple-choice answers were tested for readability with 5th grade students, tested for reading level, and submitted to a second panel of professional astronomers to check for face and construct validity of the items. The MPCI-MS was tested with N ¼ 296 students from grade 5 in elementary school to secondary 2 (M age ¼ 10.2 to 14.1). One item about global perspective on lunar phases had to be removed because of poor psychometric properties. The revised MPCI-MS has a post-test Cronbach alpha score of 0.786 and good overall psychometric properties: the mean difficulty index for the MPCI-MS pretest is 0.47, and 0.61 for the post-test; mean point-biserial correlation (post-test) is 0.376. Test-retest without instruction at one-week interval showed high test-retest reliability [M pre ¼ 13.696, M post ¼ 14.523; tð45Þ ¼ 1.315, p ¼ 0.192]. We conclude that the MPCI-MS is a reliable and valid instrument that can discriminate between novices and experts, and can be used to assess 10 to 14 year-old students' learning gains on the topic of lunar phases. The final version of MPCI-MS is a 19-item instrument, including two new questions about eclipses, that takes between 15 and 25 min for students to complete.

PD Days Under the Moon: Teaching Lunar Phases to In-Service Teachers by Doing Astronomy Like Astronomers Do and its Impact on Their Students’ Learning

“…Day 1: Presentation of the conceptual framework of the activity ("Doing astronomy like astronomers do"), including what is scientific inquiry (including observation, modelling, and communication), examples of the knowledge-building cycle in astronomy, how can it be transposed in the classroom, and the process of conceptual change, including common students' conceptions about the phases of the Moon (see Chastenay and Riopel (2020), Appendix). Presentation of the tools for observing the lunar phases over the following weeks (Lunar Phases Observation Log, see Figure 2; and the free astronomy software Stellarium© https://www.stellarium.org) and how to use them.…”

“…In this study, we compared pre-post-intervention measurements to assess the impact of the PD activity on in-service teachers' astronomy learning about the phases of the Moon, as well as their self-efficacy teaching the lunar phases, defined as how they perceive their ability to understand and teach the lunar phases, compared to their peers, or to what their own perceived ability was at the beginning of the training (Bandura, 1977(Bandura, , 2000Cokley, 2000). To conduct these assessments, we used the Moon Phases Concept Inventory for Middle School (MPCI-MS), a valid 19-question, multiple-choice questionnaire about the phases of the Moon (Chastenay and Riopel, 2020) as well as a self-efficacy questionnaire based on a valid instrument developed by Potvin and Hasni (2014). The latter is a six-level Likert scale questionnaire asking respondents to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with statements such as "Compared to other teachers participating in the PD training, I consider myself good at teaching the phases of the Moon."…”

Ay’ın Evreleri ile ilgili Ulusal Çalışmaların Tematik İncelenmesi

“…In the international literature on the phases of the Moon (Kriner, 2004, Ogan-Bekiroglu 2007, Trundle, Troland and Pritchard, 2008, Küçüközer, 2008, Chae, 2009, Subramaniam and Padalkar, 2009, Cid and Lopez, 2010, Sun, Lin and Wang, 2010, Trundle and Bell, 2010, Yen, Thasi and Wu, 2013, Plummer, 2014, Lin, 2016, Entress, 2019, Chastenay and Riopel, 2020 there are studies conducted in many languages with different sample levels and for different purposes.…”