Astronomy Concept Inventory

Bilici et al [1] conducted a study to construct an Inventory to measure students’ understanding of astronomy concepts. This research aimed to promote an Astronomy Concept Inventory (ACI) to evaluate students’ realization of main astronomy concepts like moon phases and earth motion. The study reveals that ACI is qualified to assess students’ understanding of astronomy concepts, and then concludes if the curriculums are well-developed or they need improvement. The statistical results showed that ACI is suitable for testing students’ realization of concepts. While the results of the study showed that ACI succeeded to identify some students understanding of astronomy concepts, the conclusion that ACI is reliable to identify students’ understanding

It started by providing the definition of Astronomy which get the reader more focused in this field. Then the researcher started to highlight the wide importance of astronomy in different aspects which attracts the reader more to the study. To support the importance of astronomy, the researcher listed the countries attentive in research in the field of astronomy. For the significance of astronomy, it is a main part of the curriculums from the primary education to the university based on the cited source. The purpose of the study is clearly stated at the end of the introduction which is developing an astronomy concept inventory to evaluate the undergraduates’ understanding of earth motion, moon and moon phases. Also, the problem is clearly stated. But the introduction has not been without drawbacks as the researcher claimed that there are many studies concerning students’ conceptual understanding of some astronomical concepts without providing a valid source. So, for this part to be enhanced an updated source should be cited to support his credibility, and how these results are related to his study and its effects on astronomy conceptual understanding. This is also a missing part in the title as it does not indicate the aim of the inventory, so the main target of that inventory should be added in the title. The researcher then started to nominalize and enumerate the topics in the updated curriculum in

It is obvious that paradigm used in this research is quantitative as the data set and results of the data analysis are expressed in numbers. The researcher mentioned who are his sample group, and where they come from. He mentioned the tool used to analyze the data which is Item and Test Analysis Program (ITEMAN). The procedures are explained well, and he gave detailed information about the questions of the ACI. He mentioned the sources from which each question is taken. Two experts examined the structure and content of the questions, thus the question are chosen carefully. The data analysis provided by ITEMAN showed that some questions have very low difficulty levels and other questions have low discrimination index. These questions were excluded; therefore, the remaining questions will achieve the research purpose effectively. The statistical results showed that the mean P value (0.66) is less than the alpha value (0.80) which means that the null hypothesis is false and his inventory is valid to identify students’ understanding. It is important to recall that the inventory was administered to 262 students from different universities in Turkey; so, the sample size is not enough and not representable. Only students who have an introduction to astronomy were included in the study, so the researcher used purposive sampling in his study. The researcher could have used graphs to represent the results of