A Construction and Standardization of a Concept Achievement Test in Mathematics for Class-Viii Students

Abstract

Mathematics is the subject where there is not much scope for rote memory and memorization. Students are to apply the gained knowledge after thinking, reasoning, analyzing and generalizing principles into different situations. Without proper understanding of different mathematical formulae, rules, postulates and principles, Mathematics cannot be learnt. Therefore, there is a serious need for careful and proper assessment of the students regarding the achievement of conceptual understanding in Mathematics they have attained from teaching and learning. To assess their understanding, students should provide justifications along with their answers of the multiple-choice questions and considered as an effective means of assessing students’ understanding. Therefore, the study was carried out to construct and produce a valid and reliable Concept Achievement Test in Mathematics. The test is a Two-Tier Multiple Choice Test in which the first tier of each multiple choice test-item is a content question having three choices, where only one choice is correct among the three choices. The second tier of each test-item includes a set of four reasons for the answers given in the first tier. Out of these four reasons, one is correct and the other three are the students’ probable misconceptions regarding the concept. For constructing the Concept Achievement Test, the researcher has decided to include 40 test-items from 50 test-items. The test was constructed and standardized on the sample of 400 Class-VIII students studying in four (4) CBSE schools of Assam. Content validity was estimated and split-half technique was adopted for finding reliability of the test. The reliability of the half test was found as 0.76 and the reliability coefficient of the whole test calculated by using Spearman’s Brown Prophecy formula was 0.86. Thus, the reliability and validity of the test are found to be quite satisfactory.