Frontiers in Education (Nov 2023)
The nature of historical knowledge in large-scale assessments – a study of the relationship between item formats and offerings of epistemic cognition in the Swedish national test in history
Abstract
Issues of validity and reliability have an impact on the construction of tests. Since the 2010s, there has been increasing emphasis in Sweden on enhancing reliability in the large-scale test system to combat grade inflation. This study aims to examine how this increased focus on reliability has affected how the nature of historical knowledge is presented in the national test in history. Accordingly, it addresses the following research question: what kinds of epistemic cognition does the test communicate to students? The concept of epistemic cognition builds on Kuhn et al.’s discussion on epistemic understanding, regarding the balance between the objective and subjective dimensions of knowledge. Furthermore, the concept of companion meanings is used to establish a connection between the items in the test and students’ epistemic cognition. The findings show that the selected-response tasks predominantly communicate an objective dimension of historical knowledge, while the constructed-response tasks communicate both subjective and objective dimensions of historical knowledge. The findings regarding the offerings of epistemic cognition are discussed in relation to validity, reliability, item formats and classroom practices.
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