• Two subjects were chosen from Form 2 Sekolah Menengah Sharif Ali test paper
• From each subject, three 2007 assessment papers were analysed
• The analysis of question papers were based on Bloom’s Taxonomy thinking skill levels, using key words given by Taylor (n.d) in The Use of Questioning in Raising Higher Order Thinking as guidelines
Results:
Table 1: The Bloom Taxonomy analysis of Sekolah Menengah Sharif Ali test papers in 2007 which includes the March 2007 First-term test, Mid-year/Third-term examination and End of Year examination for Mathematics and Science subjects
Cognitive level Science Commerce First term Mid-year End-year Average First term Mid-year End-year Average
Knowledge 52.0 52.6 56.0 53.5 56.9 48.9 63.6 56.5
Comprehension 26.5 18.1 16.0 20.2 27.0 31.1 22.7 26.9
Application 9.8 13.8 17.0 13.5 6.6 11.1 4.5 7.4
Analysis 9.8 13.8 9.0 10.9 4.5 6.7 2.3 4.5
Synthesis 1.0 0.9 1.0 0.9 5 2.2 6.8 4.7
Evaluation 1.0 0.9 1.0 0.9 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Total question (%) 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Figure 1: The percentages in bar chart of Bloom’s taxonomy test analysis of First term, Mid Year and End of Year Examinations for Science subject in 2007 From Figure 1, it shows that the test papers from First term, Mid-year and End-year examinations concentrate on testing the students’ knowledge. The percentage on assessing the knowledge only was 53.5%. From the bar chart, it shows that percentage of this type of questions increases from one assessment to the other. The questions that required comprehension skills were higher in the First-term but decreases by the End-year exam; at which more questions were given on application skills. Questions which required the students to analyse were decreasing for the End-year exam but remained the same for the other two. The ability of the students to synthesize and to evaluate was not truly assessed in this subject throughout the year. In summary, the assessments were