Ajattelutaidot ja tiedon ulottuvuudet vuosiluokkien 7–9 maantiedon osaamistavoitteissa ja päättöarvioinnin kriteereissä

This research analyzes the distribution of thinking skills and knowledge dimensions in the geography learning objectives in grades 7–9 (pupils aged 13 to 16), and in the national final assessment criteria applied at the end of grade 9. The revised Bloom’s taxonomy was used as a framework for the content analysis. The results reveal that the thinking skills in the geography learning objectives mainly include understanding, applying, and analyzing, whereas the knowledge dimensions emphasize conceptual and procedural knowledge. The thinking skills in the assessment criteria are distributed by grades. For instance, grade 5 (in the grading scale from 5 to 10) includes only lower-order thinking skills, whereas only grade 9 includes all the higher-order thinking skills. The comparison between the learning objectives and the assessment criteria indicates that achieving higher grades (9–10) requires higher-order thinking skills more than the learning objectives demand. The results suggest that the alignment between the learning objectives and assessment criteria should be carefully considered in the planning and implementing of the curriculum.