METHODS, TOOLS, AND DIDACTIC CONDITIONS FOR DEVELOPING CRITICAL THINKING COMPETENCIES THROUGH SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT TASKS
Keywords:
summative assessment, critical thinking, competency development, assessment tasks, didactic conditions, analytic rubric, evidence-based reasoningAbstract
This article examines how summative assessment tasks can be transformed from instruments of final control into means for developing students’ critical thinking competencies. The study addresses a recurring pedagogical problem: in many classrooms, summative assessment measures reproduction of content more often than analysis, justification, inference, or evaluation. The purpose of the study is to identify the methods, instructional tools, and didactic conditions that allow summative assessment to stimulate critical thinking rather than merely record achievement. The research was conducted as a theoretical and design-based inquiry grounded in conceptual analysis, comparative examination of assessment formats, and pedagogical modeling. The results systematize five major methods of critical-thinking-oriented summative assessment, seven practical tools for task construction and scoring, and a set of didactic conditions needed for valid classroom implementation.
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