Readings:
Download Here - Smith_Tanner, Treagust
https://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/assessment/formative.html (Defines diagnostic/pre-assessment and clarifies how formative assessment differs)
Smith, Julia I., and Kimberly Tanner. "The problem of revealing how students think: concept inventories and beyond." CBE-Life Sciences Education 9.1 (2010): 1-5. (A critical overview of techniques to diagnose student thinking) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2830154/pdf/cbe1.pdf
Treagust, David F. "Development and use of diagnostic tests to evaluate students’ misconceptions in science." International journal of science education 10.2 (1988): 159-169. (A classic paper about diagnostic tests) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0950069880100204
Supplemental Readings (These are each examples of studies examining the effectiveness of specific diagnostic tools):
Garvin-Doxas, Kathy, and Michael W. Klymkowsky. "Understanding randomness and its impact on student learning: lessons learned from building the Biology Concept Inventory (BCI)." CBE-Life Sciences Education 7.2 (2008): 227-233. http://www.lifescied.org/content/7/2/227.shor
Queloz, Annie Champagne, et al. "Diagnostic of students' misconceptions using the Biological Concepts Instrument (BCI): A method for conducting an educational needs assessment." PloS one 12.5 (2017): e0176906. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0176906
Shi, J., et al. "Using Pre-Assessment and In-Class Questions to Change Student Understanding of Molecular Movements." Journal of microbiology & biology education 18.1 (2017). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5410762/
Bissonnette, Sarah A., et al. "Using the Biology Card Sorting Task to Measure Changes in Conceptual Expertise during Postsecondary Biology Education." CBE-Life Sciences Education 16.1 (2017): ar14. http://www.lifescied.org/content/16/1/ar14.short