New Perspectives in Science Education

Final-year exams in economics programmes often reward the reproduction of abstract definitions and models while neglecting students' ability to apply them to concrete situations, or the reverse. Building on research, this paper treats the abstractness–concreteness dimension as a link between student assessment and student conceptions. The aim is to propose and validate an alternative assessment tool that positions each exam item and each student answer on an abstract–concrete continuum. The proposed methodological framework combines abstractness-concreteness evaluation with traditional test scores to explore possible similarities in assessment results. The model is validated on exam results of final-year bachelor's students of International Economic Relations in Bulgaria in the subject of International Finance and International Economics. The results show the capacity of abstractness-concreteness perceptions to act as assessment measures for acquired knowledge and grade integrity. The novelty of the study lies in turning a cognitive dimension mostly studied in mathematics and science instruction into a practical, discipline-independent instrument for validating exams. Recommendations of this paper are predominantly for the evaluators in Bulgarian universities. 

 

Keywords: abstractness–concreteness; alternative assessment; exam validation; student conceptions; Bulgarian graders

 

REFERENCES

 

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