Assessing Students’ Chronological Understanding with Particular Reference to the Examples of CSAT History Exam Papers

Abstract

This study attempts to examine types of items in College Scholastic Ability Test(in the following CSAT) History that are devised to assess students’ chronological understanding. The nature of historical study can be characterised as an attempt to provide access to the riches of human experience, including the framing of its long-term development as well as its immediate details. In this respect, close attention needs to be drawn to the issue of how to access students’ ability to understand historical time. Some patterns of the structural elements of questions used in the previous exams are identified through analysing Korean History, Korean Modern and Contemporary History, and World History exam papers between 2005 and 2013. The items in question can be divided into two types: sequencing alternatives in a chronological order and selecting an alternative that falls into the time span guided by item stem and instruction. This study intended to provide suggestions for the development of exam questions that access students’ chronological understanding, with a focus on the form and type of multiple-choice type items. In conclusion, it should be emphasised that items in exam papers are devised to access students’ understanding of big pictures of history rather than their fragmented knowledge about specific date and event. In particular, more attention needs to be paid to the question of how to enable students to make sense of historical time in the light of causal relationship, incorporating history’s multiple dimensions.