Development and application of a four tier test to determine primary school teacher candidates' minsconception about force and motion

The aim of the study is to develop and apply a four tier misconception test to identify primary school teacher candidates' misconceptions on force and motion concept. In this study cross-sectional survey method from quantitative study models was used. The participants were 565 primary school teacher candidates studying at Faculties of Education in Akdeniz University, Mehmet Akif Ersoy University and Süleyman Demirel University in 2018-2019 spring term. A Four Tier Force and Motion Misconception test was used as a measuring tool. It was developed based on previously used three-tier force and misconception test. Validity and reliability of the test were checked out over again. The data was analyzed via descriptive statistics and inferential statistic. Face and content validities of the test were investigated with expert opinion and False Positive and False Negative values. The results showed that the False Positive walue is ,70% and False Negative value was ,75% respectively. Exploratory factor analysis was consulted for construct validity. The Croabach alpha reliability coefficiets were found as .555 and .818 for the true scores and misconception scores considering the four tier reponses. The misconceptions with 10% and above were considered as significant misconceptions. The results indicated that primary school teacher candidates' conceptional understanding levels about force and motion concept are rather low and they have four important misconceptions. Inferential statistics results revealed that primarry school teacher candidates' misconception scores were found to be significantly different in terms of grade level and gender. The students studying at the 3rd grade seem the have more misconceptions than those studying at the 4th grade. Likewise, males had more misconceptions than females.