An investigation on the teacher-made social studies course exam questions in terms of the type of the questions, content validity and revised bloom's taxonomy

The aim of this study is to analyze the social studies teachers' exam questions in terms of types of the exam questions, content validity and the cognitive process dimension and the knowledge dimension of Revised Bloom's Taxonomy.The study was designed as a qualitative research and it was carried out using the descriptive survey model. The study group consisted of 32 social studies teachers working in 30 different secondary schools in Adapazarı, Akyazı, Arifiye, Hendek and Ferizli districts of Sakarya province. Totally 195 exam papers (document), 54 from fifth grade, 69 from sixth grade and 72 from seventh grade, collected from social studies teachers were analyzed. In the study three data collection tools were used. These tools are "The Determining the Type of Question Form", "The Table of Specifications" and "The Cognitive Process Dimension and The Knowledge Dimension Questions Analysis Form". By means of these tools, 6067 questions in exam papers were analyzed by using descriptive method of qualitative analysis methods and in the context of the aim and sub objectives. According to the results of the study, social studies teachers chose mostly multiple choice questions, but they chose very few open ended questions. With the purpose of determining the result of the content validity analysis, it was found that the questions were related to acquisitions. But it was also found that the content validity was low on the basis of both units and acquisitons. As a result of analysis related to the cognitive process dimension and the knowledge dimension of Revised Bloom's Taxonomy, the questions, asked in the exams by the teachers, were found to be related to remember and understand in terms of the cognitive process dimension, and factual knowledge in terms of knowledge dimension of Revised Bloom's Taxonomy. The results of the study mostly showed that the questions asked by social studies teachers were in lower cognitive level. However, results showed the number of the questions of higher cognitive level was low. Keywords: Social Studies, Exam Questions, Content Validity, Revised Bloom's Taxonomy.