Difficulty-Generating Features of Text-based Physics Tasks

Abstract

Influencing the difficulty of performance tasks is of great interest in science education as in several other subjects. In the context of the VAMPS project, difficulty-generating features with respect to the cognitive demand of text-based physics tasks were systematically varied at three levels. Based on preliminary work and two pilot studies presented here briefly, a model was developed by which cognitive requirement was varied according to three features. The viability of this model was empirically tested with a sample of n = 414 secondary school students. The feature <i>cognitive activity</i> proved to be a significant factor influencing the empirically measured difficulty of tasks. With the help of the feature <i>number of information obtained from task stem</i> and <i>number of subject-specific mental procedures</i>, no systematic influence on task difficulty could be shown. The influence of the test persons’ individual prior knowledge on the actual task difficulty is generally assumed to be a confounding factor. Overall, the present study contributes to a better understanding of construct representation in assessments of subject-specific proficiency and empirically confirms that a systematic variation of the task feature <i>cognitive activity</i> on three levels affects task difficulty