COMPARING COGNITIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF TEST DEVELOPERS AND STUDENTS ON A MATHEMATICS TEST WITH BLOOMS TAXONOMY

An examination was conducted to determine whether the Taxonomy of Educ ational Objectives: Cognitive Domain (Bloom, Englehart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956) provided an accurate model to guide item writers for anticipating the cognitive processes used by students on a large-scal e achievement test in mathematics. Thirty Grade 7 students were asked to think aloud as they solved problems on a mathematics achievement te st. Students' cognitive processes were classified with a coding system based on Bloom's taxonomy, The overall match between the responses ex pected by the item writers and the responses observed from the student s was 53.7%. The match score between the expected and the observed res ponses differed for the high and low mathematics achievers and also di ffered across the 2 content areas measured on the test. Agreements bet ween the expected and the observed responses were further assessed by comparing loglinear models. The most parsimonious model contained an a chievement group, cognitive level, and content area main effect, and, most important, a cognitive level by content area interaction. This fi nding indicated that the 2 dimensions assumed to be independent in the table of specifications, cognitive level and content area, were, in f act, dependent. The results of this study suggest that Bloom's taxonom y does not provide an accurate model for guiding item writers to antic ipate the cognitive processes used by students. Implications for test design are discussed.