Assessing Social Studies Knowledge: An Exploratory Study

• In Event: Social Studies Curriculum: Standards, Testing, and Curriculum Enactment

Abstract

This exploratory study looks at the extent to which test-takers know the content that test designers have created a multiple-choice social-studies test to measure. Data for this study were collected from 13 tenth-grade world history students in an urban classroom in New York State. Each participant answered 15 multiple-choice questions that had appeared on published high-stakes exams. The findings presented here address the following research question: to what extent do multiple-choice history questions accurately measure student knowledge of history content? The findings suggest the possibility that multiple-choice questions may not measure student factual and conceptual knowledge as well as supporters and critics of multiple-choice testing assume.

Author

• Gabriel Aaron Reich, Virginia Commonwealth University