Understanding the intellectual demands of an intended curriculum is crucial as it defines the frames for teaching and learning processes and practice during lessons. In this study, upper-secondary school chemistry curricula contents in Czechia, Finland, and Turkey were analysed, and their objectives were compared using the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy (RBT). The intellectual demands were examined analysing the action verbs in the three curricula objectives based on their association with the intended cognitive process dimensions in the RBT. The Turkish upper-secondary chemistry curriculum was found to be more structured, detailed, and containing more objectives than the Czech and Finnish curricula. The domineering objectives in cognitive demands were understand (77.2%) and analyse and apply (both 7.1%). Conceptual items dominated (59.8%) with procedural items identified (29.1%). Also, there are five metacognitive items (3.9%). The Czech curriculum, compared to the Finnish and Turkish curricula, does not take modern trends in the field of chemistry into account. The cognitive demands in the Czech curriculum were skewed toward apply (40%) with understand and evaluate accordingly represented by 20%. Conceptual items dominate with a 53.3% of occurrence. In the Finnish curriculum, the cognitive demands were skewed toward apply (47.1%) with create (23.5%) and understand (17.6%). Procedural (35.3%) domains predominate, although metacognitive objectives represent a significant share (23.5%) too. These findings from the contents and intellectual demands of the curricula in each of the three countries have the potential to help teachers and other actors in education design the interventions and assessments implemented in the classes. Comparing the distribution of intellectual demands between the countries provides an international reference for educational reforms in hand in many countries.

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Teachers understand knowing "what" and "how" of a curriculum from the curriculum literacy (Kasapoglu, 2017): To know "what" of a curriculum is associated with being informed about the elements of a curriculum (objectives, content, teaching-learning process, measurement and evaluation) while knowing "how" of a curriculum with knowing how to implement and criticize a curriculum. When the literature is reviewed, few studies that directly address curriculum literacy are found (Bolat, 2017; Erdem & Eğmir, 2018; Kasapoglu, 2017). There is still a need for a valid and reliable measurement tool that measures perceived curriculum literacy of teachers. This study aims to develop a scale assessing perceived curriculum literacy of teachers. In the scale development stage, the scale was administered to 240 teachers. Results of exploratory factor analysis revealed that two factors were extracted: namely, perceived characteristics of a curriculum-literate teacher and perceived benefits/outcome expectations from curriculum literacy. In the scale validation stage, the 17-item final version of the scale was used on 192 teachers. The two-factor structure of the scale was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. For each factor, the Cronbach's alpha was calculated as .93 and .87, respectively. Furthermore, results of the Multivariate Analysis of Variance revealed that perceived curriculum literacy significantly differed on whether teachers received graduate education in the field of curriculum and instruction or not. Findings presented some evidence for the fact that the scores obtained from the Perceived Curriculum Literacy Scale for Teachers were valid and reliable.

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Worldwide, the effectiveness of education systems has aroused the interest of scholars within the field of education. Most countries receive feedback on how well their education systems prepare students for life (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2009a). The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), triennially organized by the OECD since 2000, has been one of the most significant means which covers reading, mathematics, and science necessary for learners to solve real-life problems and to be prepared for real-life (Çobanoğlu & Kasapoğlu, 2010). As the major focus of the PISA'09 assessment is on reading literacy (OECD, 2009a), the following section provides an overview of reading literacy. Reading literacy is defined as one's ability to understand, use, reflect on, and engage with written texts. It has been assessed in relation to text format, reading processes (aspects), and situations (OECD, 2009a). In order to assess text format, students' reading literacy is measured by taking into account the range of written material that students will encounter in their later lives, such as forms, application letters, advertisements, among others, by means of both continuous (narration, exposition, and argumentation) and non-continuous texts (lists, forms, graphs, or diagrams). Regarding reading processes, also known as aspects, students are assessed on whether they are able to display proficiency in accessing and retrieving knowledge, in their ability to form a broad understanding a Koray KASAPOGLU is currently a research assistant of Primary Education. His research interests include curriculum, instruction, learning and assessment.