beating tina to the post.

Research Question:What is the relationship between high school biology students’ misconceptions of molecular genetics and those students’ performance on a molecular biology test?

Subjects: Students will be chosen from a regular level biology course in a school in Forsyth County. Nine students will be chosen at random from within that particular classroom.

Measures/Procedures: The students will take their normally scheduled test on molecular genetics. The test scores for the nine students will be gathered. Within one day of that test, a one on one interview will be conducted with each of the nine students. The interview questions will prompt them to show their understanding of the large concepts covered on the test. The questions will be very broad, urging the students to explain all that they know about topics with minimal guidance and scaffolding. After the interview, the researcher will rank the student’s understanding of the material based on a rubric scaling system. The student will be classified as having one of the following five levels of understanding: very thorough, thorough, moderate, lacking, very lacking.

Analysis: The results from the understanding assessment and the scores on the tests will be compared through a correlation.