The Assessment Of Thinking Skills in Chemistry

For Secondary School Students In Malaysian Classroom 

 Tajulashikin Jumahat

Prof. Dr. Rajendran NagappanProf. Dr. Mohamad Sahari NordinAss. Prof. Dr. Suhailah HusseinAss. Prof. Dr. Nooraini Othman

Thinking Skills In The Classroom The attainment of thinking skills in students’ learning is a

vital aspect in enhancing their thinking capabilities. PPPM 2012-2025 stresses on the HOTS among students. Assessment endeavour is an ample platform to evaluate

whether the HOTS have been grasped by students in certain subject.

The aim of this study is :• Employing appropriate framework of thinking to develop the test specification.

•Developing a measure for the assessment of thinking skills in chemistry.

•Assessing the students’ performance primarily for the HOTS items.

Statement Of Problem Classroom testing requires classification of

thought as the framework for the Test Specification.

Appropriate taxonomy is needed. Alternative taxonomy helps the progression of

the development of Test Specification.

The Alternative Taxonomy

BLOOM’S TAXONOMY ALTERNATIVE TAXONOMY

Knowledge Lower-Order Thinking

SkillsComprehension

Application

Higher-Order Thinking Skills

AnalysisSynthesisEvaluation

Conceptualizing The Taxonomy for Thinking Skills in Chemistry

Conceptualizing The Taxonomy for Thinking Skills in Chemistry

Table of Specification for TOTSIC

Item Pool of TOTSIC

Items were adapted and self-constructed.

Adapted from textbook and reference books.

The content validity was rather confirmed by 2 experts in chemistry education.

Methodology

Cross-sectional Survey Method Data was analysed using two software namely ITEMAN

version 3.5 and SPSS 11.5.

Study 1 Sample 1: 46 Form 4 science students: 23 male and 23

female Item Analysis

Study 2 Sample 2: 57 Form 4 science students: 18 male

(31.6%) and 39 (68.4%) female Assessment of students’ levels of thinking skills.

STUDY 1: Item Analysis

STUDY 1: Instrumentation

STUDY 2: Findings

Discussion

The study corroborated the utility of alternative taxonomy instead of the ordinary Bloom’s.

The alternative taxonomy of thinking level (i.e. LOTS and HOTS), has proffered a number of advantages in constructing test specification.

The importance of guidelines in developing multiple-choice questions.

Evaluation of items from content experts could enhance the soundness of items in measuring thinking skills pertaining to the content of the items.

Conclusion

Classroom assessment is an ongoing endeavor. This study offered scientific methods for teachers

to conduct a formative classroom assessment on thinking skills for chemistry subject as part and parcel of the teaching and the learning processes.

The classification of thoughts, namely LOTS and HOTS, has made the assessment framework more practical and approachable for classroom assessment.

TERIMA KASIH