Practices and Challenges on Test Construction of Talipan National High School Teachers: Basis for Enhanced Curricula

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Test construction for teachers is a hard task for many but easy to some. Because of this aforementioned scenario, the researchers thought of conducting this research to help alleviate the performance of teachers as well as to help students to uplift their comprehension over their academic subjects. As an institution, Talipan National High School continues to innovate to better cater its clientele and deliver quality education among its students. The researchers as Master Teachers of the school, continue to initiate and develop programs to best enhance the academic performance of students and provide technical assistance to teachers that have low key over test construction.

METHODS

The study was quantitative-qualitative research employing the use of the survey questionnaires and focus group discussion method. The survey-questionnaire used was composed of six (6) sections. The first section was about the demographic profile of the respondents. The second up to the fifth section was about the practices on test construction in preparing the following items: true-false, multiple choice, completion/fill in the blank and matching items. The sixth section was composed of three (3) open-ended questions. In the analysis and interpretation of the results, frequency-percentage was used to determine the demographic profile of the respondents while the weighted arithmetic mean was employed to identify the teachers' level of responses. To analyze the response of teachers on the questions concerning their experienced challenges and need, a consensual qualitative approach was used.

RESULTS

This research revealed that most of the teachers lack the awareness of test construction guidelines and lack the skill to apply it practically since the majority of the respondents were confused about it. This also shows that most of the teacher respondents need a training/ seminar/workshop on test construction. In the end view of the study, an enhancement program was designed and developed.

DISCUSSIONS

This study shows that teachers were challenged: on categorizing and distribution of questions according to Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives for test development; on construction of table of specification; on making a multiple choice type of test and its destructors; on experiencing difficulties in making higher provoking questions and centralized examination; on the topics that are hard to create questions and did not answer.