Development of counterintuitive basic electric DC circuits test

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop a test to assess students’ level of counterintuitiveness in basic electric circuits. Data from four samples were gathered and used to develop and validate the counterintuitive basic electric circuit test (CBECT). The initial version of the CBECT was administered to the first sample and data collected from this sample were used for the pilot study. The aim of the data collected from the second sample was to comb out the items that were not counterintuitive. The data collected from the third sample were used for concurrent validity issues while data from the fourth sample was used for the test-retest reliability analysis. Finally, 26 items that can be used to determine counterintuitive cases in basic electric circuits at the high school level were constructed.

Teaching and Investigating on Modelling through Analogy in Primary School

“…The teaching of electricity has been widely addressed, at different levels and with different methodologies, but it has mainly concerned middle and high school teaching, often on the topic of electric circuits [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], but also on other topics such as electric transport in solids [11,12] or electrostatics [13,14]. With regard to K-5 children, investigations on electricity are more limited in number and variety of topics.…”