Entwicklung und Evaluation eines Testinstruments zur Untersuchung von Vorkenntnissen und Präkonzepten in der Kosmologie

Cosmology deals with the development of the universe as a whole. Cosmological discoveries in theory and observation have therefore formed our modern scientific worldview. Transferring a modern worldview through science teaching is a frequent request in science literacy discussion. Nevertheless, there is still a need for research and education development. Cosmological topics often appear in the media and, at the same time, are further away from everyday life. Thus, scientifically incorrect conceptions can develop particularly easy and can lead to problems in class. The objective of this scientific work is to contribute to this area of research and to investigate the preconditions regarding present knowledge and conceptions in cosmology, which students bring into the classroom, and to compare these with those from other countries. This is done by a qualitative analysis of an open-ended questionnaire. On this basis a multiple-choice questionnaire is developed, applied and evaluated. The results show large gaps in knowledge in the area of cosmology and provide first indications of differences between countries. There also exist some partially widespread scientifically incorrect conceptions such as the association of the Big Bang with an explosion, the Big Bang being caused by a collision of particles or bigger objects, or the idea of the expansion of the universe meaning new discoveries and/ or knowledge. Furthermore, only every fifth student mentioned the correct age of the universe or the expansion of the universe as one of the three pillars of the Big Bang theory, whereas almost 40% could not name a single evidence. For the closed questionnaire good evidence could be established for different aspects of validity. In addition, there exist first indications, that the questionnaire can measure knowledge gain and therefore can likely be used to investigate the effectiveness of learning units. Moreover, a corresponding model of the development of understanding of the expansion of the universe looked promising. This study provides research contributions to students' prior knowledge and preconceptions in cosmology and their large-scale assessment. This opens up the possibility of future research in the area of group comparisons in particular concerning objective country comparisons and investigations of the effectiveness of single learning units as well as comparisons of different learning units among each other.