Which of the following assessment questions is the most appropriate to test…
2023
Which of the following assessment questions is the most appropriate to test students' understanding and appreciation of Indian federalism?
- A.
Write a brief note on the three organs of the state — the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.
- B.
What are the three levels of the government? What are their functions?
- C.
What do you think might happen if we did not have any state and local governments and all decisions were made at the Centre?
- D.
Define federalism.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Concept: A learning objective like “understanding and appreciation” of a concept sits at the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy — Understand, Apply, Analyse and Evaluate — which require a student to reason about a concept’s meaning, causes, or consequences. Such an objective is not well assessed by an item that only needs ‘Remember’ — recalling, listing, or defining a term — because recall can be produced without any grasp of why the concept matters.
Application: Applying this to the four assessment questions offered:
Assessment question | Cognitive demand it makes on the student |
|---|---|
Organs of the state — legislature, executive, judiciary | Recall and organise known facts about a related structure (separation of powers within one government), not the centre–state division of authority |
Three levels of government and their functions | Recall and list factual information about administrative tiers |
Consequence of not having state/local governments, all decisions centralised | Reason about cause and effect, and form a judgement on why distributing power across levels matters |
Definition of federalism | Recall a stored definition |
Only the question asking what might happen if state and local governments did not exist and all decisions were made at the Centre requires the student to reason about why a federal structure matters, rather than simply reproduce facts about it — this is exactly what testing 'understanding and appreciation', as opposed to mere recall, means.
Cross-check: This matches the pedagogical guidance (used in Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation) that appreciation-type objectives are assessed through application/evaluation items rather than recall items, and it is confirmed by the official CTET August 2023 Paper-II Social Science answer key, which keys this item to ‘What do you think might happen if we did not have any state and local governments and all decisions were made at the Centre?’