Pre-service primary school teachers' science content knowledge: An instrument for its assessment

An instrument to assess primary school science content knowledge in pre-service primary schoolteachers was elaborated and validated. A multiple-choice test with 50 items was initially proposed. Four content areas of science from the curriculum of Primary Education were considered: natural environment and its conservation, biological diversity, health education and the human body, matter and energy. A sample of 83 pre-service teachers from a Spanish university participated in the statistical validation process. External consistency (Test-Retest correlation), internal consistency (Kurder-Richardson's 20th formula), item difficulty and item discrimination indices were analysed as well as distr…