Iron

A diagnostic probe

This is one of a set of classroom resources designed to assist teachers in diagnosing student thinking, including common alternative conceptions ('misconceptions'). These resources are published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and are available for free download.

The resources are intended for diagnostic assessment, and although teachers can set them as exercises to be collected in, the probe may be more productively employed as the basis of pair/small group work followed by a teacher-led classroom discussion. (The purpose is not to grade or score learners' current understanding, but to identify misunderstandings and unhelpful intuitions in order to shift thinking towards the scientific accounts and models.)

Read about diagnostic assessment

For each probe, the RSC provides the instrument which can be copied for classroom use, plus documentation to guide the teacher in using the probe.

The materials are copyright, but may be freely used in educational contexts. (For permission to use for any other purpose, please contact the RSC).

The resources are available either in book form or as free downloads.

The book

The book version is:

The book derives from a Royal Society of Chemistry Teacher Fellowship project that developed materials to support diagnostic assessment in the science / chemistry classroom

The book is available for sale from the Royal Society of Chemistry or other booksellers.

This accompanies Chemical Misconceptions – Prevention, Diagnosis and Cure, Volume 1: Theoretical background

Free downloads:

The probes can also be downloaded from the RSC website: