Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.15516/cje.v20i3.2791
Development and Validation of New Objective School Achievement Tests in the STEM Field for Primary School Studentsdručja za učenike osnovnih škola
Dubravka Glasnović Gracin
orcid.org/0000-0001-5195-4873
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Teacher Education
Toni Babarović
orcid.org/0000-0003-0838-3205
; Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences in Zagreb
Ivan Dević
orcid.org/0000-0003-0163-3371
; Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences in Zagreb
Josip Burušić
orcid.org/0000-0002-0933-2189
; Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences in Zagreb
Abstract
Measuring student achievement is one of the key issues when researching quality and efficiency of an educational system. Several existing studies tried to express student achievement in mathematics or science through separate tests within the particular domain. The aim of this paper is to consider the possibility of measuring knowledge in the STEM area through integrated tests and to present the characteristics of the new tests developed particularly for this purpose.
In this paper, a complete psychometric analysis of the newly developed tests is provided. The paper outlines the steps undertaken in the process of determining content requirements within each knowledge test, preliminary validations of initial test versions, as well as the results obtained in the main study. The main study encompassed 586 grade 4 students, 580 grade 5 students and 632 grade 6 students.
In every test, the unidimensional structure was obtained using confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses. Acceptable reliability was obtained for all three tests (α4th = .78; α5th =.70; α6th = .79). The correlations between total test scores and achievement in STEM school subjects were moderate to high. Therefore, all three newly developed tests represent a one-dimensional, reliable, discriminative and valid measure of integrated students’ knowledge in the STEM area.
Keywords
measuring knowledge; STEM achievement; test development
Hrčak ID:
207408
URI
Publication date:
27.9.2018.
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