Publications & Resources

Career-Readiness Features in Korean Assessment Items

Dec 2018

Kilchan Choi, Jenny C. Kao, Nichole M. Rivera, and Li Cai

This report is the third in a series considering career-readiness features within high school assessments. The goal of this study was to explore international comparisons by applying feature analysis to Korean assessment items. Twenty math test items from the Gyeonggi Province in South Korea along with performance data from roughly 4,000 Grade 12 examinees were obtained. We applied the process of feature rating and analyses explained in the first two reports in this series to the Korean assessment items. Math test items were translated and rated using the same scheme as the American items by the same math expert raters. While the mathematics content differed from the American test, career-readiness features were also found in this small set of items. Korean math items shared similar patterns of feature representation with Smarter Balanced items, with the exception of a couple of features (e.g., critical thinking and visualization were rated more frequently among Korean items). Critical thinking was positively associated with item difficulty. It is possible that the type of math content (e.g., calculus) plays a role, which should be explored in future studies with larger sets of test items, different math content, and other international data sets.

Choi, K., Kao, J. C., Rivera, N. M., & Cai, L. (2018). Career-readiness features in Korean assessment items (CRESST Report 859). Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST).