Does the development of new science curriculum like the Next Generation Science Standards mean multiple choice questions are no longer acceptable? Does it mean that short answer or essay/written responses are the only responses that assess critical thinking? The short answer is no. Written responses are not the only way to assess critical thinking. Multiple choice can assess critical thinking too. And, I believe multiple choice can still be a part of your NGSS science test – by writing critical thinking multiple choice tests. So, what do you need to do to have multiple choice tests align with the skills that new curriculum is trying to stress?

One change teachers can make is by changing the types of multiple choice answers in our tests. A common argument against multiple choice is that one can get to the answer by eliminating obviously wrong options.  Thus, as detractors will argue, a multiple choice test is no longer a test on knowledge but instead an exercise in test writing. I agree with this argument. A multiple choice test should not be a test about testing but rather a test about content knowledge and understanding. To integrate multiple choice into the current curriculum, we need to make students think about each option in a question by writing better responses. We outline a few strategies below to help write better multiple choice responses that promote more critical thinking. Handouts – which will include a sample passage and critical thinking multiple choice examples – are available for download at the end of this post.

Multiple Choice is Critical Thinking

Here’s the big idea: answering good multiple choice question is critical thinking. Why?  Because, for a student to read each multiple choice answer to assess whether one option is THE answer among all the options requires critical thinking. However, this is the ideal. Unfortunately, a lot of multiple choice answers are written so that students rely merely on recall or never require critical thinking at all.

This problem is not impossible to solve. But, it takes time and practice. Personally, I’ve written multiple choice questions for all our REAL Science Challenge contests – and I am only starting to be comfortable writing good multiple choice questions that require students to think critically. Below are some of the strategies I’ve researched and adopted in writing the multiple choice options to our problems. I hope you find them useful too.

7 Tips to writing Critical Thinking Multiple Choice 

Strategy 1: Answers must all sound plausible.

If each option sounds plausible, then students will take time to think about and distinguish the differences between each option.  Obviously phony answers may be fun to include as a multiple choice option, but those options can also be easily eliminated (without thinking critically) as not the answer.

Strategy 2: Have more than 1 right answer.

This strategy is used on Advanced Placement (AP) exams. And, on REAL Science Challenge contest questions, questions with more than 1 correct multiple choice answer are extremely challenging for students. This is no surprise. Most students look for 1 correct answer and then stop. But what if there were more than 1 answer? Then, students would need to check all options to see if any other option would also correctly answer the multiple choice question.

Strategy 3: Instead of restating the textbook, provide alternate examples.

By providing the right option as an exact copy of what’s stated in the textbook, students can identify the answer strictly by recall. To challenge the mind a little more, provide options that are new or analogous examples. This way, students need to at least analyze to see if the new examples fit with what was stated in the textbook.

Strategy 4: Have answers that include a justification

Students can choose what appears to be a correct answer. But, can they then justify their answer?  By adding justifications, students will need to choose the correct response and understand why the option is correct too.

Strategy 5: “All of the above” or “None of the above” cannot be an answer

Similar to the problem with including fun and phony multiple choice options, both “All of the above” and “None of the above” can easily be eliminated without using critical thinking. For example, so long as one of the options is not correct, this automatically eliminates “All of the above”.

Strategy 6: Answers should not have words like “never” or “always”.

As the old mantra goes, “never say never”. Words like “always” and “never” represent extremes, which are clues for students to eliminate the multiple choice option.

Strategy 7: Keep the lengths of each multiple choice answer the same.

Unfortunately, students are able to pick the right answer (or eliminate wrong ones) simply because they are overly wordy. Thus, this becomes an exercise in test writing instead of knowledge assessment. By keeping the length of all answers the same, we close this loophole.

Wrap Up

Multiple choice questions get a bad wrap from new curriculum for not being able to assess critical thinking. This is not without reason: lots of multiple choice questions rely on simple recall or knowing some test writing strategies. This is unfortunate because multiple choice questions can assess a greater breadth of content than written response. And, done correctly, multiple choice can assess critical thinking skills too. Perhaps, with a few improvements, critical thinking multiple choice questions can help return multiple choice tests to being a good assessment option. Click the link below to download the handouts to this post. Our handouts include a quick checklist of the strategies above as well as a sample passage and multiple choice examples. Please help us share our resource and website with your peers too!

Until next time, keep it REAL!

Resources

Handout(s): 36 – Critical Thinking Multiple Choice Handouts

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