Cognitive Levels in English Summative Assessment Items Under the Merdeka Curriculum

Masintan Masintan, Ira Maisarah

Abstract


Summative assessment in the Merdeka Curriculum is carried out as a basis to ensure the overall achievement of learning objectives. This study examines the cognitive levels in English summative assessment constructed by teachers under the Merdeka Curriculum. This study employed a descriptive analysis with 30 test items for Grade X and 30 test items for Grade XI, which were constructed by two English teachers at Senior High School Kota Bengkulu. Each test item was examined and classified according to the cognitive process levels of the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy to identify the distribution of Lower-Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) and Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) in the assessments. The study found that English summative assessment test items developed by teachers are still dominated by lower-order thinking skills (LOTS). Most of the questions are at the Remembering level (C1), while questions that measure higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) are only found at the Analyzing (C4), Evaluating (C5) levels, and Creating (C6) levels, with relatively fewer numbers. Overall, HOTS elements have appeared in the analyzed assessments, but their proportion is still lower compared to LOTS. Therefore, English teachers need to increase the use of HOTS-based questions in summative assessments so that they are more in line with the objectives of the Independent Curriculum in developing students’ critical and higher-order thinking skills.


Keywords


Cognitive Levels; English Summative Assessment; Test Items; Merdeka Curriculum

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.31004/jele.v11i5.2710

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