An Appraisal of Secondary School Certificate’s Examination Papers of Pakistan Studies in the Perspective of Higher Order Thinking

Abstract

Higher-order thinking skills are highly important for the students in learning new knowledge, storing it in their memories, correlating, and organizing to achieve a specific purpose. Students Higher-order thinking skills can be determined and activated through higher-order thinking assessment tasks. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to analyze five years (2014 to 2018) secondary school level Pakistan Studies papers, utilizing higher-order thinking. Assessment papers of the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education Islamabad were qualitatively examined. Findings of the current research showed that major portions of the assessment papers comprising the tasks that can measure the remembering and understanding skills lie in the cognitive domain. However, the portions for the assessment of students’ abilities regarding the application, analysis, evaluation, and creation were quite limited at the secondary level. Therefore, it is recommended that the assessment process in the subject of Pakistan studies may be revised and training may be organized for teachers and educators to include questions of higher cognitive capabilities for the improvement in students’ learning.