Volume 2 (Issue 4) Download

Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to examine the difficulty and the effectiveness of the 2018 IJSO examination papers in distinguishing students

Robin Powles and Thandie Lekone

 

Abstract

The written examinations of the IJSO are used to challenge and distinguish the best science students in the age of 15 years or younger from around the world. How well these written examinations are able to assess the student’s knowledge and (practical) skills very much depends on the questions presented in the examination papers. This study determined the Difficulty and Discrimination Indices of the multiple choice, theory and experimental questions of the 2018 IJSO examination papers and evaluated these items according to the cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy. These indices and the stages of Bloom’s taxonomy were used to find out how well the examination papers differentiated between students of this event. This analysis found a reasonable correlation between the stages of Bloom’s taxonomy and the difficulty experienced by the students suggesting that this may be an effective tool for assessing the difficulty of questions when preparing future papers. The comparisons between the examination formats and subject areas found considerable variations in difficulty and discrimination suggesting the potential to develop a more balanced set of challenges across these areas.