Development of the three tier diagnostic test that measures middle school students' misconceptions about the movements and phases of the Moon

In this study, it is aimed to determine the misconceptions of middle school students about the movements and phases of the Moon by developing a three-tier diagnostic test and to determine the rate of their existing misconceptions and lack of knowledge about the subject. The population of the study, in which cross-sectional study was used, consists of all middle school students in Turkey, and the sample consists of 196 middle school students studying in Kahramanmaraş. For this purpose, interviews were conducted with 12 (5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade) students studying in a middle school in Kahramanmaraş. Considering the answers given by the students to the interview protocol, a questionnaire consisting of 8 open-ended questions was created and applied to 200 (5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade) middle school students. Among the answers given by the students to the open-ended survey questions, similar ones were gathered under the same headings and categorized and concept networks were created. Then, the frequencies of the misconceptions identified with the open-ended questionnaire were calculated and the high-frequency ones were written as the distractors of the diagnostic test. The pilot application of the diagnostic test consisting of 8 three-tier questions was applied to 160 (5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade) middle school students. After the adjustments made in the test, taking into account the analysis of the data and expert opinions, the Moon's Movements and Phases Diagnostic Test (AHvETT) was finalized and turned into a measurement tool suitable for detecting misconceptions in middle school students. AHvETT, which was developed to detect the misconceptions of middle school students about the movements and phases of the Moon, was applied to 196 middle school students (5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades) and the data were analyzed using Microsoft Excel and R statistics program. Among the misconceptions of the students, the ones with the highest frequency are "The Sun illuminates the whole Moon during the full moon phase (30.526%)", "The Moon receives the most light from the Sun during the full moon phase (14.737%)" and "The Moon only rotates around its own axis and revolves around the Earth (14.211%)" misconceptions. In the light of these results, it can be said that the subject of Moon's movements and phases is among the subjects that are not easy for students to understand and that there are misconceptions similar to the misconceptions found in the literature. In addition, it was concluded that some of the misconceptions in the literature about the movements and phases of the Moon were not found at the students. Key words: Movements and Phases of the Moon, Misconceptions, Three-Tier Diagnostic Test, Middle School Students