THE DEVELOPMENT OF DIAGNOSTIC TEST ON ALGEBRA FOR GRADE 9th STUDENTS IN ENGLISH PROGRAMME

Abstract

The Objectives of this research article were to 1) to develop four-tier diagnostic tests on algebra for grade 9^th student in English Programme 2) to examine the quality of the tests 3) to study the students’ misconceptions on algebra The algebraic topics used in this study were simultaneous equations, inequalities, factorization, quadratic equation and function. There were 5 tests following the topics with 10 questions on simultaneous equations, 10 questions on inequalities, 5 questions on factorization, 10 questions on quadratic equation, and 10 questions on function. All the questions were multiple choices with four tiers, 1^st tier was the answer of the question; 2^nd tier was the confident level; 3^rd tier was the reason of the 1^st tier and 4^th tier was the confident level to the 3^rd tier. The sample were 200 of grade 9^th English Programme students, 2565 academic year in Bangkok selected by using purposive sampling. The study found that the 5 four - tier mathematics diagnostic tests were developed from the surveyed test then checked the quality of the tests by using difficulty and discrimination indices, content validity and reliability. The difficulty index was between 0.23 – 0.78. The discrimination index was between 0.14 – 0.73, and the reliability of the tests were .95 .83 .73 .81 and .77. The study found that the four-tier diagnostic test on algebra could be able to categorize the students in 4 groups, correct concept, lack of confidence, misconception and lack of knowledge