Several issues of NSTA journals this year have had an assessment theme, including the April/May issue of Science & Children and the January issue of Science Scope. I recently became aware of another assessment project called MOSART, which stands for a mouthful: Misconceptions-Oriented Standards-Based Assessment Resources for Teachers. I must admit I get a little skeptical when I see a project name that manages to incorporate multiple descriptors into its name (and I’ve written many of these myself!), but this one is well worth a visit!
These assessments, for grades K-12 in the physical and earth/space sciences (no life science/biology as of this date), are designed to help you determine what your students understand and what misconceptions they bring to class. The project is sponsored by a National Science Foundation grant to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (Note: check out the other terrific resources on their site for professional development and content background). The assessments are different than many multiple choice tests, in that the questions are not designed to test students’ recall of facts. The questions are based on the NSES standards and allow students to think their way through the items.
But you can’t just download the tests and put them to your file cabinet! Users must register (free) and complete a brief orientation. It’s online and it took me about 30-40 minutes (mostly because I wanted to see all of the video segments!). This tutorial is one of the best things about this project, It guides you through a discussion of what misconceptions are, how these tests let you probe your students thinking, how/when to use the assessments (e.g., at the beginning of a course, or as a pre/post test), what you can learn from looking at how many and which students chose which distractors, and how to interpret the results. As you can probably tell, this is not the type of assessment to use for a “grade.”
After the tutorial, you then have access to all of the tests, which are emailed to you in PDF format, along with guidelines for interpreting the results. I looked at a K-4 physical science test (which is to be given to students in grades 5-6). The download included two versions of the test and a key that goes far beyond a traditional answer key to help you to analyze the results in terms of student (mis)understandings.
The end of the school year is hectic, but I could see myself using this during the last week of school as a “puzzle” exercise for the students (the grades are turned in by then anyway). Then, over the summer I would look carefully at the responses to determine what I might include or change next year. I’m sure the students’ responses would be interesting!