Thinking Skills in Exam Models for CLIL Primary Subjects: Some Reflections for Teachers

Abstract

Although CLIL methodology is very relevant in education, it still confronts numerous challenges. One of them is the maximization of content learning, language learning and content competences acquisition. All factors in the teaching process are relevant: teachers, methods, classroom interaction, materials and assessment. This chapter centers on how summative assessment is presented in the exam models provided by textbooks publishers. Specifically, this analysis aims to show how several thinking skills are considered when content is being assessed. A corpus of 30 exam models was created, including the subjects of Social Science and Natural Science, different academic years and assorted terms. The questions and tasks were classified following the categories in Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (BRT) (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). This taxonomy is a model for classifying thinking according to six levels of complexity: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create. The analysis grid includes information about the verbs used in the questions and tasks (define, compare, classify, evaluate inter alia.) These verbs are closely related to the thinking skills. Results show that the most assessed thinking skills in the analyzed exams correspond to the remember and understand categories in BRT. The analyzed exams assess content knowledge through different approaches, which do not interfere with language knowledge. The chapter concludes with suggestions of some possible ways of reconsidering CLIL methodology in the light of assessment tasks. Also, a recommendation of the importance of implementing HOTS (high order thinking skills) and how the teaching of low order thinking skills (LOTS) may be expanded to the teaching of HOTS