Evidence Based Science Education

This blog will examine research and evidence as it relates to science education and science education issues. It is an attempt to bring together the science of education and the practice of education.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Assessment and Testing. What does the research say?

We have all heard the catch phrases against testing such as “we are testing our students to death” or that our schools have become “a culture of testing”. But what does research say about students in terms of testing and learning? The answer may surprise you.

Testing not only assesses what students have learned, testing enhances student learning. That’s right! Testing it turns out can be a learning experience itself. A Study published in Memory by Karpicke indicates that repeated testing was MORE effective than repeated studying for information retrieval. Our brains work by making neural connections. Every time a particular neural pathway is used, that pathway or connections is strengthened, making it more likely for that person to remember it in the future.

Beyond that they found that even when students get the wrong answer on a test that it enhances learning. It is thought this works for a couple of reasons. Test questions can help activate prior knowledge and let students know what is important. So it helps focus attention and effort.

Studies find that “People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail” (Roediger, 2009). The key to this is that the students have to get feedback on the correct answer in a timely manner.

How can teachers use this? As hard as it is for some to believe, teachers should be giving more, harder tests to students, especially more pre-tests and more formative tests. But the tasks must be relevant and students must receive timely feedback on their performance on these tasks.

Under the right conditions testing is good for our brains, and good for learning.

Read more at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=getting-it-wrong and http://www.williams.edu/Psychology/Faculty/Kornell/Publications/Richland.Kornell.Kao.2009.pdf

1 comment:

  1. To be effective at enhancing learning, testing should stimulate the thinking neural pathways and not the memorizing neural pathways. The "testing to death" complaint comes, at least in part, from the fact that these tests require mostly memory and in part from the fact that the really high stakes tests occur at the end of a school year when there's no follow up possible to improve learning.

    Regarding challenging students, there's little argument that challenge helps student attention and learning -- provided it's not excessive. If the class average on a test is 28%, then learning may suffer and students may become discouraged.

    Challenges work best during class discussion, student projects, and other similar activities. A stressful, timed activity like a test may not be the best place to challenge most students. Few thrive on this sort of atmosphere.

    I have encountered all sorts of responses to the concept of challenges in my work. I create online virtual labs that use prerecorded real experiments instead of simulations. The lab units include pre- and post-lab testing along with many support materials. Some teachers love it. Others say that it's "too hard for my students." Because I've watched fifth graders succeed with these labs, I know that they're not too hard. However, they do require some real thinking at times. Teachers should trust their students a bit more and not react negatively. I suspect that some of them are intimidated by the material themselves.

    ReplyDelete