The current19:04Without final exams, are students really learning?
As secondary schools throughout Canada end during the academic year, students are entering the final stretch of their exams, a period marked by both anticipation and anxiety.
In Castlebrooke High School in Brampton, Ontario, Science Professor Jason Bradshaw observes pressure construction. For many of his students, he says, emotional toll is visible.
“They are very stressed, and I think it is due in large part to the emphasis that we put in qualifications and brands in school, and the final exam will obviously be an important part of that,” Bradshaw said The current Matt Galloway. “It is a very high risk task for them and that makes them enormous stress.”
For teenagers who juggle with study schedules and extracurricular with the imminent pressure of acting on their ambitions for the future, the exam season may seem like a moment of billing or broken.
In fact, some educators in Canada have also questioned whether the traditional test model is worth the anxiety it generates.
But others see a different side.
Kelly Gallagher-Mackay, associate professor and educational researcher at the Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, says that the tests offer a valid evaluation form, measuring learning differently from other methods, such as projects.
“There is a test point,” he said.
What clearly tell us exams?
The exams play a crucial role in the measurement of how good students have understood the central concepts of their courses, says Gallagher-Mackay.
In addition, she says that exams also help educators evaluate not only what her students have absorbed but how effective their teaching methods have been throughout the year.
“It is particularly important for the future. The test could tell you that you want to go and teach that differently next year, if there is a unit that they really did not get,” he said.
“It gives you a kind of general snapshot of the extent to which content and teaching were effective.”
Tasha Ausman, High School and Mathematics Teacher in Gatineau, who., And professor at the Faculty of Education of the University of Ottawa, says that exams are more than a measure of knowledge of content.
She says they are also tools to evaluate literacy, both in general and specific to the subject.
“They are, fundamentally, a literacy ability and deciphering in relation to the content where or may not know,” Ausman said.
In addition to understanding, he says that exams help solidify memorized and objective knowledge, especially critical of issues such as science and mathematics, where understanding of central concepts is essential.
“I try to emphasize as a teacher, ‘hey, listen, you are living in this body, you should probably know where all your bits are [and] How your organs work, “he said.
However, Ausman comments that today’s students, raised in a first digital world, often question the need to remember facts when the information is available online.
“I made some students say, and this generation might not be just, but as if they were more apathetic, ‘Why do I need to know this? I can look for it on Google,” he said.
However, Ausman believes that exams fulfill another vital function: prepare students for the pressures and expectations of adult life.
She points out the practical life skills that arise from the testing. Faced with a timed and high pressure scenario, such as completing an exam within three hours, reflects the responsibilities of the real world where the deadlines are important.
“Life is full of deadlines, no matter what work is doing,” said Ausman.
Taking exams, she says, teaches more than curricular content. “Reliability, commitment, obligation, organization, all these things also come through schooling,” he said.
Strategies to handle test anxiety
Back in Ontario, Bradshaw acknowledges that the tests “go anywhere in the immediate future.”
Then, together with other educators, it is highlighting the need to help students handle anxiety that often comes with examination.
With respect to the final exams, Bradshaw advocates familiarizing students with tests throughout the semester. By incorporating lower evaluations, he believes that students can gradually generate confidence and relieve the intense pressure that the final exams often bring.
Louis flying, professor of education at the University of Brock, also says that there are practical ways in which both teachers and students can address the anxiety of general exams.
From a teaching perspective, a steering wheel encourages educators to offer clear exam strategies, such as reading questions carefully, providing the complete exam before starting, omitting difficult questions initially and administering time effectively.
In order for the tests to be fair and support the learning of the students, the steering wheel says that teachers must design exams that 90 percent of the students can end 15 minutes well, allowing enough time for everyone to complete them.
They must also include a mixture of selected response questions as multiple, true or false option, along with built response questions, such as those that require short answers.
“We want a mixture of questions that we are asking students because they are taking advantage of different types of knowledge and skills that they would have learned and can apply,” said flyer.
As for the content, it says that the tests should have a good coincidence between what is taught and what is tested.
“What often listen to students is: ‘I studied everything that was taught in class, but the test asked me a lot of questions that we really did not cover’ and obviously, that will create anxiety for anyone.”
Finally, Gallagher-Mackay says that parents also play a key role in maintaining pressure in perspective.
“When parents and teachers are more or less giving consistent messages, children feel better with school and do it better in school,” he said.
That message is this: “The evidence is not the end of all and they are all: they are not a measure of who you are as a person, they are a valid way of evaluating what you learn in a particular course.”
