Student Content Assessments
Instrument 1: Force Concept Inventory
Project: Arizona Collaborative for Excellence in
the Preparation of Teachers (ACEPT)
Arizona State University
Funding Source: NSF: Collaboratives for Excellence
in Teacher Preparation (DUE)
Purpose: To assess the effectiveness of
each graduate to teach students desired pedagogic outcomes
(to reliably discriminate between the applicability of scientific
concepts and naive alternatives in common physical situations)
using a modeling instruction approach
Administered To: High school students whose
teachers were participating in the collaborative program
Topics Covered:
- Content Specific Assessment: physics
Format/Length: 28 closed-ended multiple-choice
questions
Evaluation Feature:The Force Concept Inventory
(FCI) was also administered to participating college students
to assess their knowledge of physics. Data from the FCI and
final grades from the physics course were compared with student
views about knowing and learning science using the Views About
Sciences Survey (VASS).
For further information about this instrument, see the
Modeling
Instruction Program at
Arizona State
University.
The following are sample questions from this instrument:
-
A book is at rest on a table top. Which of the following
force(s) is(are) acting on the book?
- A downward force due to gravity.
- The upward force by the table.
- A net downward force due to air pressure.
- A net upward force due to air pressure.
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(A) 1 only
(B) 1 and 2
(C) 1, 2, and 3
(D) 1, 2, and 4
(E) none of these, since the book is at rest there are
no forces acting on it.
-
A stone falling from the roof of a single story building
to the surface of the earth;
(A) reaches its maximum speed quite soon after release
and then falls at a constant speed thereafter.
(B) speeds up as it falls, primarily because the closer
the stone gets to the earth, the stronger the gravitational
attraction.
(C) speeds up because of the constant gravitational force
acting on it.
(D) falls because of the intrinsic tendency of all objects
to fall toward the earth.
(E) falls because of a combination of the force of gravity
and the air pressure pushing it downward.
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