Gleiß, Erweiterung und Reliabilitätsprüfung eines Auswertungsmanuals zur qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse von Triadentests

Erweiterung und Reliabilitätsprüfung eines Auswertungsmanuals zur qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse von Triadentests

Autor: Christin Gleiß

betreut von: Roland Biernacki

Students have different perceptions about their reality. The knowledge about complicated scientific phenomena might be restored as mental representations, also called concepts, in their brain. These concepts include more than just the knowledge of facts, they contain information about the connection of specific details of one concept. The concept does not always correspond to the scientific understanding, this is why investigations are undertaken to find out students existing concepts or alternative concepts to the scientific idea.

In this study the conceptions about cooling the beehive of more than 600 eighth-graders from twelve different Bavarian higher secondary schools were inspected and summarized. For this purpose three survey methods were used in the underlying research project: the writing of coherent texts (Tippet, 2010), the use of concept maps (Novak, 1990) and the completion of triad tests (Neuroth, 2002). This paper deals with the revision of a priori designed category system to analyze the student’s concepts by interpreting their answers in the triad tests. For adjusting the category system the qualitative content analysis according to Mayring (2002) was used. Moreover, the reliability of the utilized manual was tested. Therefore, the intrarater reliability as well as the interrater reliability was calculated via Cohen’s Kappa (1960).

In the end a reliable and detailed system of categories was achieved. Besides, important conceptions and misconceptions of students concerning the biological topic “cooling the beehive” were explored and can especially be helpful for teachers and researchers in the field of science education.