AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CONSTRUCTION PROCEDURE IN CHEMISTRY OBJECTIVE TEST AMONG SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Background of the study: Since the very beginning of the educational system, standardized testing has been an essential component of it. The idea of testing may be conceptualized as the act of presenting a person with a series of activities, the successful completion of which is contingent on the individual's possession of a certain set of knowledge and skills. As a result, the testing system in our educational institutions has been given a boost as a direct result of the focus that is being placed on ongoing evaluation inside Nigeria's educational system. The Continuous Assessment of Individual Progress is emphasized in the National Policy on Education (2015), which states that "Educational Assessment and Evaluation will be liberalized by basing them in whole or in part on continuous assessment of the progress of the individual." This policy document highlights the significance of continuous evaluation. Because of this, it is important for instructors to evaluate their students' behavior in the topic that is being taught at the beginning and end of the course. This will provide them an accurate picture of how far each student has come during the instruction. (Ahmed, 2022), (Aiken, 2022), and others have posited that continuous evaluation is a game-changing method of evaluating students and programs (Ajagun, 2020). They say that continuous evaluation is a more legitimate kind of assessment than traditional examination or other methods of assessment that are considered to be more conventional. The advantage of continuous assessment is based on the fact that it can test a far broader range of the skills and capabilities that are inherent in a particular field of study than traditional methods of evaluation can. Both the student and the scientific instructor face unique challenges when attempting to implement continuous evaluation for a variety of reasons.

Continuous assessment is described as a means of determining what pupils have learned from their educational experiences in terms of knowledge, thinking, reasoning, character development, industry, and other domains in a 1980 handbook published by the Federal Ministry of Education. As is the case with a large number of the educational specializations, the use of continuous evaluation may be made particularly fruitful in the study of scientific topics, in particular chemistry. Any topic in the natural sciences may be broken down into three primary categories, or components, that can be evaluated: Aspects that pertain to the cognitive (or theoretical) sphere, the psychomotor (or manipulating) sphere, and the emotional (or mental state) sphere. Because of the advent of continuous assessment, there has been a growing need for classroom teachers to prepare and administer tests in order to obtain specific vital information about what has been done during the process of teaching and learning. These tests aim to determine how well students have retained the information that they have been taught. As a result of this, testing may serve both as an instructional tool and an evaluation tool in this context. These goals are very necessary to achieve while teaching chemistry. When a testing exercise is employed as a teaching tool, the results of the activity offer immediate feedback on the learning that has taken place inside of the classroom. Testing is a useful tool for educators since it identifies issues with the methods of instruction that are being used as well as the areas in which pupils being instructed need improvement. In this particular situation, testing is being used as a diagnostic tool. A test is an instrument of evaluation that assesses accomplishment, forecasts performances, and helps with selection exercises. Tests also assist in the exercise of choosing candidates. Therefore, testing gives valuable information that may be used for decision-making about students, instructors, and the program. The instructors conduct the accomplishment assessments in order to determine how much the students have learned from the instructional process. These assessments, as defined by Carnduff and Reid (2021), are designed to determine the degree to which an individual has learned certain material and mastered specific abilities, often as a direct consequence of receiving targeted instruction. In the majority of our nation's schools, it is the instructors that design and oversee the majority of these examinations in an effort to determine how much knowledge their pupils have acquired as a result of the lessons they have received. The majority of the time, these tests are not examined to see whether or not they are valid and reliable, which are two of the most essential characteristics of a good test. Bruner (2022) states that "Teacher produced exams are often poor in a number of respects." The most frequent error is one that is associated with inefficient communication. Several research uncovered an additional observation of interest about the features of test and classroom questions posed by scientific educators. This observation relates to the qualities of questions asked by science educators. Studies such as those conducted by Odor and Carnduff (2021); Ahmed and Ajayi (2022) and Ajayi (2021) demonstrate that teacher-made examinations or questions are significantly weighted with elements that are located in the lower levels of Bloom's cognitive domain of educational goals. These shortcomings in test construction among science instructors are a cause for worry and should be addressed as soon as possible. As a result, it is of the utmost need to rectify the situation by making accessible to chemistry instructors a guide for the development of a solid chemistry accomplishment exam. Since of the presence of these defects, remedial assistance is required because it will have a significant impact on the performance of the students, and the crucial role of a test as a teaching tool, as highlighted by Aiken,(2022) would not be accomplished without it.