Levels of Cognitive Demand of Assessment Tasks Presented in the Junior High School Grade 8 Ministry-Published Mathematics Textbook
Dewi Rahimah (a*), Agus Susanta (b), Edi Susanto (a), Tria Utari (a)

(a) The Study Program of Bachelor of Mathematics Education,
The Faculty of Teacher Training and Pedagogy, Universitas Bengkulu
Jl. W.R. Supratman, Kandang Limun, Bengkulu, Indonesia 38371A
dewirahimah[at]unib.ac.id

(b) The Study Program of Master of Mathematics Education,
The Faculty of Teacher Training and Pedagogy, Universitas Bengkulu
Jl. W.R. Supratman, Kandang Limun, Bengkulu, Indonesia 38371A

Abstract

Indonesia is now developing a new curriculum, known as the independent curriculum. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia published mathematics school textbooks to assist the implementation of the independent curriculum. The mathematics school textbooks present assessment tasks for students. Mathematical tasks having high levels of cognitive demand can stimulate students^ motivation and classroom participation in learning mathematics as well as create productive learning mathematics (Ni et al., 2018). It is important to know the levels of cognitive demand of assessment tasks in Ministry-published textbooks. This study examined the levels of cognitive demand of assessment tasks presented in the Junior High School Grade 8 Ministry-published Mathematics Textbook. This study is qualitative in nature. This study used textual analysis with the coding method to gather data. Then, the data was analysed descriptively. This study found that tasks with low levels of cognitive demand dominated the assessment tasks given in the Ministry-published textbook. Mostly, the low levels of cognitive demand are procedures without connections. The assessment tasks presented in the textbook did not adequately promote high levels of cognitive demand. The assessment tasks rarely included doing mathematics, which is the highest level of cognitive demand.

Keywords: Levels of cognitive demand- Mathematics textbook- Assessment tasks

Topic: Mathematics