Developing And Using Of The Acid-Base Reaction Concept Inventory

Concepts are an important part of middle school chemistry basic knowledge, and they are also the core content of middle school chemistry curriculum. Students always have many alternative conceptions in the learning of chemistry concepts, which directly affect the students' understanding of scientific concepts. Therefore, diagonosing students' alternative conceptions and their conceptual understanding levels is valuable to learning. In recent years, concept inventory is widely used to measure students' understandings of the concept. Researchers abroad have developed some chemical concepts inventories, and conducted a wide range of applications. But there is rare chemical concept inventory developed in China mainland. We have not yet referred to the concept inventory of acid-base reaction. Thus, this paper developed the acid-base reaction concept inventory that has important theoretical and practical value.Based on literature review and structured interviews, we learned the middle school students' alternative conceptions about acid-base reaction. Then we developed the acid-base reaction concept inventory and performed pilot test. The data were analyzed using both classical test theory(CCT) and Rasch modeling. Finally, a good quality inventory was made, which can measure the students' conceptual understanding level. At the same time, we also explored students' alternative conceptions about acid-base reaction and gave the specific teaching suggestions. This thesis consists of nine parts, and the main contents are as follows:The first part, introduced the reason for selecting this thesis and clarified the theoretical and practical value of this study.The second part, reviewed studies about acid-base reaction at home and abroad, then sorted out students' alternative conceptions about acid-base reaction. Next, we analyzed the different theme chemical concepts inventories, which have been developed abroad, at the same time summarized the general process of concept inventory development.The third part, put forward the purposes, tasks, methods and research design of this paper.The fourth part, elaborated the triple representation theory as the theory basis of the research.The fifth part, defined the “acid-base reaction” from the history view of acid-base theory development, the analysis of curriculum standards as well as teaching material and the existing researches of acid-base reaction. Finally, acid-base reaction understanding levels are built under the guidance of the triple representation theory.The sixth part, developed the acid-base reaction concept inventory, which was the core part of the thesis. Firstly, based on the previous analysis, we developed the “acid-base reaction concept inventory-a”. Performed the initial concept inventory, next used the classical test theory(CCT) and Rasch modeling to analyze and revise the initial inventory, and finally got the “acid-base reaction concept inventory-b”. Then 730 high school students from different regions and schools were assessing using this inventory. The results showed that the inventory has good psychometric indexes.The seventh part, gave a detailed explanation of the items from the formal inventory, and put forward the corresponding teaching suggestions according to the students' answers. Then analyzed the current high school students' understanding level about acid-base reaction and their alternative conceptions.The eighth part, summarized the conclusions obtained in this study, and gave some teaching suggestions.The ninth part is the problem to be resolved in the further research.The innovations of this study are: summarized the general process of concept inventory development; Built the concept of acid-base reaction understanding levels based on the triple representation theory; Developed the acid-base reaction concept inventory independently, finally got a good quality inventory after analyzed and revised items, which can measure the students' concept understanding levels.