Gloria Viviana Barinas Prieto

The aim of this article is to describe the design and validation of an objective test about ecosystems within the primary school natural science and environmental education curriculum. The test follows the evidence-centred design and structure of the Icfes assessment model (2018, 2019). The sample for the study comprised 133 students from public schools in Colombia, aged between 7 and 11 years. The test was validated by a panel of experts and an analysis of its difficulty and discrimination indices. Test reliability was assessed by calculating the biserial correlation and KR-20 coefficients. The results showed indices of difficulty and discrimination in keeping with Backhoff et al. (2000) and Ortiz et al. (2015). Reliability was also found to be acceptable at 0.74. The study findings show that the results of the test are appropriate, the quality is sufficient, and the test assesses the natural science skills of inquiry, explanation and comprehensive use of scientific knowledge.

The objective of this study is to describe the analysis of validity and reliability of an instrument that determines the epistemological beliefs about school natural sciences in primary education in the Colombian context. For the design, the teleological framework of the referents that guide the curriculum in Natural Sciences and Environmental Education in Colombia, theoretical epistemological criteria on the beliefs, and characteristics of the population were considered. Methodologically, for the quality assessment of the instrument, the psychometric parameters of validity—of content and of construct—and reliability were analyzed through the SPSS statistical tool. A total of 102 third grade students between 7 and 11 years of age participated in the study. As the main finding, the instrument presents a high reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.866) and validity (KMO = 0.858) in six factors. With this, it is concluded that it has a structure and coherence in its network of meanings, which facilitate progress in the understanding of the aforementioned epistemological beliefs.