The impact on student achievement of independently manipulating abstractness-concreteness and cognitive level in test items.
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| Other Authors: | , |
| Format: | Thesis Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
1984.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Link to OAKTrust Copy Link to ProQuest Copy |
| Abstract: | The question has been an important pedagogical tool for several centuries, but only in recent times has the impact of questioning on learning been made the object of consistent research efforts. The recent focus came as hierarchically structured cognitive taxonomies were developed which allowed the classification of tasks in terms of their cognitive demand. A common assumption in education and indeed one of the assumptions upon which the cognitive taxonomies were based is that one's ability to deal with greater cognitive complexity is reflective of a higher level of understanding. Consistent with that, a number of studies asked whether exposure to higher cognitive level tasks enhanced student achievement. Results have been mixed and often confusing. Another domain in learning has yielded more consistent results. Research has shown that abstractions pose greater difficulty to learners than do concepts which are more concrete. These two dimensions of cognitive level and abstractness have not previously been combined in a research model apparently because of the assumption that cognitive level and degree of abstractness vary along a single continuum rather than independently.The present study asked whether the independent manipulation of those two dimensions in test items would account for a significant amount of the variance in subjects' scores on an achievement test. Using a Likert scale, judges classified concepts according to abstractness. Concepts judged to be clearly abstract, and concepts judged to be clearly concrete were used in the stems of multiple choice items. Each concept was used twice: once in a recall item, and once in a cognitively-higher-than-recall item. Factorial analysis of variance of results from 75 subjects revealed that the cognitive level main effect was significant (p < .0001) as was the abstractness main effect (p < .0004) and the interaction (p < .0001). Furthermore, r-squared values indicated that cognitive level accounted for 27% of the variance in test scores, abstractness accounted for 2%, and the interaction accounted for 16% of the variance in subjects' test scores. |
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| Item Description: | Typescript (photocopy). Vita. "Major subject: Curriculum and Instruction." |
| Physical Description: | x, 77 leaves ; 29 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-76). |