Comparative analysis of LGS science questions and science teachers' written exam questions according to bloom's taxonomy

This study aims to compare the cognitive levels of the LGS Science exam questions administered by the Ministry of National Education between 2018-2022 and the written exam questions created by science teachers during the 2017-2018 and 2021-2022 academic years, using Bloom's Taxonomy as the framework. To this end, using the document review method, we examined 4,623 written exam questions administered by science teachers to 8th-grade students in 20 schools in the 2017-2018 academic year and 23 schools in the 2021-2022 academic year in Muş province and its districts, along with 100 Science exam questions from the LGS exams between 2018-2022. At the end of the study, it was determined that 50.35% of the written exam questions from science teachers were at the knowledge level, 35.75% at the comprehension level, 13.19% at the application level, 0.56% at the analysis level, 0.34% at the synthesis level, and 0.02% at the evaluation level. In contrast, the LGS Science questions were distributed as follows: 2% at the knowledge level, 30% at the comprehension level, 9% at the application level, 49% at the analysis level, and 10% at the evaluation level. Additionally, 54.81% of the teachers' written exam questions were multiple-choice, 14.08% were fill-in-the-blank, 17.80% were true-false, 5.54% were open-ended, and 7.76% were matching and short-answer questions, whereas all LGS questions were multiple-choice. The study concluded that while the written exam questions of science teachers predominantly measured lower-level thinking skills, the LGS exam questions conducted between 2018-2022 assessed higher-level thinking skills.