Examining Irish Leaving Certificate physics examination questions (1966-2016) according to Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy

Abstract

Over the past half-century free secondary level education has been introduced in the Irish education system and as a result a steady increase in the number of students completing a third level education has been observed. In tandem with this widening participation in second level education, curricula have been adapted to accommodate the varying needs and abilities of students while at the same time, addressing the changing role of science education in the national economy. Between 1966 and 2016, three different physics syllabi have been implemented at the upper secondary level in Irish schools. The focus of this study was to examine what were the cognitive demand of the Leaving Certificate Physics examination questions from 1966-2016. Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives was used as a classification tool of the level of cognitive demand in the analysis of the examination question parts, as it has been used by the Irish Department of Education in the preparing the examination questions. A sample of nine Leaving Certificate Physics examination papers were selected as representative samples of the three syllabi spanning the fifty years. Despite clear changes in the three physics syllabi over the fifty year period with changes in examination question style, there was not a notable change in cognitive domains of examinations papers. All question parts were classified according to four levels of cognitive demand with the cognitive domain ‘remember’ coded most frequently (ranging from 73% in 1967 to 46% in the 2008 examination). Notably, none of the nine examination papers examined in this study contained questions (or question-parts) which coded for the cognitive domains of ‘evaluate’ or ‘create’.