• Journal of Science Education
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.164-174
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to find out taxonomic characteristics of objectives infered from questions of summative evaluation by analyzing those objectives with Bloom's revised taxonomy of educational objectives. 1,711 questions of midterm and final examinations collected from 25 middle schools were analyzed to classify objective of each question. The major findings of the study were as follows: first, from the analysis of objectives in the knowledge dimension, the assessment of factual knowledge was most prevailing(67.6%) in the biology summative evaluation. In the cognitive process dimension, memory assessment was most dominant(76.1%). Thus, the main objectives of evaluation leaned toward particular classes in the Bloom's revised taxonomy, which was different from the findings of earlier studies on the weights of evaluation areas. Second, the level of the objectives should be determined in consideration of the grade of middle schoolers, as their cognitive level improves with grade. In fact, however, there was no difference among three grades in characteristics of objective taxonomy.