Development and field-testing of an instrument for rating cognitive demands of mathematical assessment items

Abstract

Teachers’ judgements of the cognitive demand of mathematical assessment items have implications for the nature of students’ learning experiences. However, existing taxonomies for classifying cognitive demand are often not customised for pre-university or A-level mathematics teachers to use. This paper reports on the development and field-testing of a cognitive demand instrument specifically for helping A-level mathematics teachers to sharpen their judgements of the cognitive demand of A-level mathematical assessment items. Fourteen A-level Mathematics teachers from a junior college and an Integrated Programme school in Singapore participated in this study, where they rated the cognitive demand of assessment items on selected Pure Mathematics topics from the national A-level examinations using the cognitive demand instrument. The instrument was found to be useful to the teachers in providing them with an awareness of how the cognitive demand of A-level mathematical assessment items could be understood through the dimensions of complexity, abstractness, and strategy.