ERIC Number: EJ956291
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011-Dec
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1539-1515
EISSN: N/A
A Study of General Education Astronomy Students' Understandings of Cosmology. Part I. Development and Validation of Four Conceptual Cosmology Surveys
Wallace, Colin S.; Prather, Edward E.; Duncan, Douglas K.
Astronomy Education Review, v10 n1 p010106-1-010106-20 Dec 2011
This is the first in a series of five articles describing a national study of general education astronomy students' conceptual and reasoning difficulties with cosmology. In this paper, we describe the process by which we designed four new surveys to assess general education astronomy students' conceptual cosmology knowledge. These surveys focused on the expansion and evolution of the universe, the Big Bang, and the evidence for dark matter in spiral galaxies. We also present qualitative evidence for the validity of these surveys. (Contains 6 tables and 2 figures.)
Descriptors: General Education, Astronomy, Surveys, Evolution, Validity, Scores, Science Curriculum, Evaluation, Science Education, Interviews, Higher Education, Test Theory, Item Response Theory
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Colorado
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A