Trends and Patterns Within the Test Content of Ehime Prefecture's Upper Secondary School Entrance Examinations

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the trends and patterns within the test content of Ehime Prefecture's Upper Secondary School Entrance Examinations over the past thirty-one years. For this purpose, 1,331 questions were extracted and organized into a text database to facilitate an analysis of the method of questioning, as well as the content of the questions. Questions were formatted to alternately elicit "short answers", "written answers", or "multiple choice answers". Their content classified as "scientific terminology", "calculations", "explanation of natural phenomena", "explanation of reasoning", and "figures and graphs". This study makes reference to the national science curriculum and divides the time covered into three ranges; "Era I"(1981-1988), "Era II"(1993-1997), and "Era III"(2002-2007). As a consequence, the changing particular characteristics of each range were examined, and the following three conclusions were drawn. (1) The "written answer" format and the "explanation of reasoning" question content appear less frequently in all of fields and ranges. (2) There was a variation according to the respective Fields in both question types and question content. In Field 1, short answer questions and calculation questions were numerous, while in Field 2 multiple choice questions and questions dealing with the explanation of natural phenomena were numerous. (3) It became clear that trends in the method of questioning for science questions from Upper Secondary School Entrance Examinations changed dramatically through the above mentioned time era - - especially Era I and Era II.