What are your thoughts, based on what you have learned so far?
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Standardized Testing and Working Memory
Janet Zadina made a post just this week on her Facebook page. She linked to the following and made this comment: 'Many of the questions are actually testing working memory, rather than rote or long term memory-knowledge. This is a problem. Deficits in working memory are associated with poverty achievement gap, as well as other situations. So the tests are not measuring what they purport to measure." http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/ar-buds-computers-needed-new-standardized-tests/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=pbsofficial&utm_campaign=newshour
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I actually had this thought while I was reading Zadina's chapter this week. Most tests and tasks done in school do not activate long term memory. The students memorize things long enough for the test then forget all the information. I think if school classrooms were more discovery based, like the real world, then more material would stick in our brains. Think about when you encounter a problem out in the real world, for example, my lightbulb on my car needed to be changed recently. Well, I noticed a problem and I did a little research, found the materials I would need, and changed my lightbulb. Now I know how to change my car lightbulb for the next time that happens. I learned something and because I had to figure out how to fix my problem on my own the material stuck with me. Imagine if I went to a classroom and a teacher told me how to change my lightbulb using mainly verbal instructions, then told me to go out and fix it. I don't think that I would be able to do it. Similarly, tests only test working memory and do not go deep enough to have a lasting effect.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Shelli's comments. So often my students compartmentalize each subject in school, because that's how the subjects are presented to them. In addition, they compartmentalize the chapters within the subjects, because that's how the subjects are presented to them. So they memorize the material in each chapter to pass a test and forget all about it when they move on to the next concept. The concepts in math are so highly connected that this compartmentalized way of thinking is becoming detrimental to student understanding. For example, if a concept I am covering in 9th grade algebra relies highly on a concept covered in 8th grade math, I pretty much have to reteach the concept to the students. They memorized a process in order to pass 8th grade, and now they are re-memorizing a process to pass 9th. I am hesitant to use the word "re-learning" because they never learned it in the first place. And if a math example or word problem discusses history or science, they get so caught up on the fact that the subjects are being mixed that they can't concentrate on what the question is even asking.
ReplyDeleteAmy,
DeleteAre there any opportunities at your school to collaborate with grade-level teachers from varied disciplines to connect concepts? I also cannot imagine your frustration with the seemingly vast prior knowledge gap between your students!
-Jamie Hipp
There is really no opportunity to collaborate with other grade-level teachers. If teachers were interested in this, it would be totally up to us to plan a time and get together to collaborate. All of our set meeting times have other agendas. It is very frustrating!
DeleteYour comment was very interesting. Like you said, if the students learned it initially, then they would not have to "re-learn" it. It was stored in their working memory long enough to pass the test or grade, but was then soon forgotten. The information never made it to long-term memory, so they never actually learned it. If the students learned it in the first place, then there would be no need for lessons of "re-learning".
ReplyDeleteChapter five seems to directly relate to this statement. In the reading, Zadina discussed how attention and working memory are overlapping pathways. Teaching students to ignore distractions (Selective Attending) doesn’t help long-term memory, unless it is done repeatedly. I do not see this happen very often. Once a unit is done, the teacher moves on to the next standard. There are constant distractions in the classroom, so students do not always have an opportunity to fully focus on the academic task(s) at hand. When it comes to standardized testing, students are usually given an isolated amount of time, before the test, in order to “study the test”. All they are doing is storing information temporarily in their working memory instead of actually learning the material. The students are not “firing and wiring” over the entire course of the school year. So they are not able to store academic concepts, which will be on the test, in their long-term memory. They are only storing it long enough to complete the test, then the information is lost.
ReplyDelete“Many times we do not need to move information from working memory to long-term memory because we need to remember it just long enough to complete an action and then we are done with it. This is a wonderful design by the brain to keep our minds clear. However, in school and other areas, we do need to move the information into long-term storage. We must do something with the information to make sure it gets stored. In other words, we must fire it but also wire it.” (Zadina, 2014, p.125)
As Shelli stated, the information needs to be related and integrated into real-life situations. This needs to be done over and over, not just once. Teachers should facilitate learning and the students should be allowed opportunities to discover ideas and concepts on their own. This way the information is more personal to them and most likely will be able to make it to their long-term memory.
Amy, we are finding that our students too are struggling to apply old information in a new setting too. They see it one way in the classroom, and struggle to know what to do when presented with a challenge they can solve using old skills/knowledge. To combat this my school has encouraged us to start our math lessons with a seemingly random math life situation, one that is not necessarily what we are currently covering, just to see if they can use the tools in their toolbox to solve it, despite it not being what we are focusing on that week. For example, we are currently talking about graphing, but I opened my lesson with a sob story about how I bought some cookies but my husband ate them, so I bought more but he ate those too. We discussed as a class how to solve it, as a group they were able to conclude that it was a multi step problem using a couple different skills we had learned (addition, subtraction, dividing). I think one of the most important parts of this is that we are teaching kids not to panic if the answer isn’t obvious. I am able to model my own thinking as coach myself on how to find the right tools to solve it. I am hoping it makes a difference for them. Maybe someday when they sit down to a test they’ll stop and remember my fake meltdown when I didn’t know how to solve a problem, but modeled how to calm myself down and take it a piece at a time.
ReplyDeleteI haven’t seen any of the new PARCC assessments yet, but it is my impression that they are working toward assessing skills (pulling answers from a text) rather than straight knowledge and the article confirms that… can anyone else speak more to this? Are they focusing a lot on knowledge or skills?
Love the fake meltdown. I think it's a great way to relate math to a real life situation. I know that if my students would slow down and think about it, they would realize how often they use math in their every day lives. I think that opening each lesson with a brief real world scenario is a really good way to help the students make connections between math and the real world. I also think it's a great opportunity to spiral some older skills into the lesson.
DeleteWhat I have seen so far from the practice tests, is the test is focused on can you follow a ton of directions. In middle school math there isn't a scantron anymore. The test booklet is the answer document. So if kids scratch through the bubbles in the booklet, like they did 3rd through 5th grade, it will be marked wrong. Also you can only show your work on pages where the page is outlined by a box. If the graph is on the page prior to the box, you will need to redraw the graph in the box where the grader will be able to it. There are lots of little new rules like that, that I think could cause a kid to fail even if they got every question 100% right. Also, in english the multiple choice questions tell you to select 4 correct answers if it is a select all question, and in math it just says select all that apply. And in math if you miss part a of a question and get part b right, you still get partial credit. However, in english you get 0 partial credit if you miss part a and get part b right. The different rules between different subjects make it confusing for kids and teachers too!
DeleteKatie - sample tests are available online. http://www.parcconline.org/samples/item-task-prototypes. I worked though a few of them and found it to be really helpful. They are definitely very challenging, and I agree that there is a lot of information going on at once. However, from my experience observing students take assessments on the computer with different types of interactive questions, the interface is pretty user friendly.
DeleteWe have the most challenges with the writing assessments, where students have to type out an essay. Our students tend to write a lot less on the computer than they do when they are writing by hand. We're trying to problem-solve around when to start teaching keyboarding skills. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Ughhh! This article is very troublesome to me, and, although I will administer small-group PARCC, I cannot imagine being a classroom teacher where student success on standardized tests determines my VAM score and my ability to retain my career! That being said, here is my list of feelings on the pros and cons of Common Core:
ReplyDeletePROS:
-The Common Core Scope and Sequence of Anchor standards do build on each other, which is important
-Common Core has fewer standards, and the connectedness of concepts is evident
-Common Core has seemingly been the impetus to re-evaluate the flawed education system
-PARCC testing on computers makes sense as students are going to need to be computer literate to live in our extremely technological world.
CONS:
-Most public schools have limited numbers of computers and bandwith to support keyboarding instruction and testing
-Pressure on teachers!
-Pressure on kids!
I agree entirely with Zadina's comment on her page, "Tests are not measuring what they purport to measure." The PARCC test, if administered on computer, is testing not only content knowledge, but also students' abilities to take that content knowledge and hold it online in their working memories while their brains are working hard to create the motor skills needed to type the information. My heart breaks for ELL's, trying to make sense of English input, turn their output to English as well, all while trying to type! If this is the student's preferred method of test taking, great! In my opinion, though, any student should be able to demonstrate knowledge via the pathway they feel most comfortable with, even if it is non traditional, like performance-based assessment.
-Jamie Hipp
Nicely put Jaime. I agree, computer-based testing is not just about students' cognitive abilities. It is not a fair assessment for all students. Differences for individual students need to be taken into account as well. It will be interesting, to say the least, to see the testing results.
ReplyDeleteJamie, You bring up an excellent point about ELL students. I agree, having them take the tests online is a lot to take in. However, I find myself wondering if the shift is, in part, a nod toward their needing computer skills in the future (many jobs require it). If students are forced to take PARCC on computers, then schools are forced to teach their students computer usage.
ReplyDeleteHey all, I found an interesting article about how students actually still prefer print material. This makes me wonder what, if any, added uncomfortableness exists during computerized assessments as a result.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/local/why-digital-natives-prefer-reading-in-print-yes-you-read-that-right/2015/02/22/8596ca86-b871-11e4-9423-f3d0a1ec335c_story.html
Katy,
DeleteI am one of the many 18-29 year-olds that prefers print to digital sources. Even though I am blessed with 20/20 vision, I find that doing a great deal of online reading leads to eye fatigue from the backlit screens for me. I can definitely relate to Baron's findings of an inability to create a mental map of where things are when reading electronically. Even with "Ctrl F" I find that I cannot easily refer back to information digitally, whereas, with print, I can simply flip back to information in its relation to pictures, dog ears, post-its, or even smudges on the paper! As I stated before, any student truly should be able to demonstrate knowledge via the pathway they feel most comfortable with.
-Jamie Hipp
This is really interesting! When I took the GRE I was nervous about having to do the entire thing online, particularly because the way I learned to take tests is to write all over it.
DeleteFor me I feel like it's a balance. To some extent I do believe this is the direction our society is going towards - doing everything digitally and online. I've learned to love my kindle, and read on it often, but prefer reading books for grad school or work in print. I think it's our responsibility to prepare students for what they will be expected to do (test online) but still provide opportunities for differentiation and support.
I personally do not like the common core curriculum at all. I don’t believe that there is only one way to teach something that will reach every student. However I have seen students that I’ve worked with grasp concepts especially in math that they were not able to before. Even with that said I don’t like the idea of forcing a curriculum on our students that shows no concrete data that it is actually successful. I agree with Zadina’s statement about the PARCC tests not being a valid test of a students’ long-term memory. I think that with all of the research we have on how the brain works, we should be able to find a way to apply that information to developing a better school curriculum. As a special education teacher I can’t just pick out an intervention for my student that I think will work, it has to be a quantitative research based intervention according to IDEA. I don’t really understand why that doesn’t apply to our students in general education classrooms.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see how this PARCC test plays out and if it will be something that will be thrown out or used in the future.
Morgan
Sorry to post so late. Even though I do not teach something objective like science or math I can totally understand how students in those subjects would merely retain information in their working memory only as long as is necessary in order to pass a test or other assessment. I did the same thing when I was in school. I remember thinking that classic thought you may have heard your students express from time to time, “I’m never going to need to know this stuff.” That being said, I failed two math classes in high school in part because I did not “fire and wire” the information, that is I did not store it in my long term memory and to this day I find my knowledge of mathematics lacking.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Shelli and some others that school lessons should be related to real life situations, however I find this more and more difficult as students grow increasingly more introverted and isolated. By that I don’t mean that they aren’t connected. Students today are more connected with one another than ever before however it’s a long-distance connection, the third party connection of online social media. When I try and relate any part of my lesson to a real world problem, the students often have only a vague conception of what that problem is.
I do find that relating ideas and concepts from ELA lessons to TV and movies is quite effective. This is related to the research I am conducting this semester.A few weeks ago we were going over vocab terms from Shakespeare’s As You Like It and I explained to the students that TV and movies can be invaluable resources for learning and especially retaining information. I used myself as an example, having learned the meaning of the term “shank” (leg or legs) from the movie Braveheart—the villain was King Edward “The Longshanks” (he was tall). Since that day I find that my students will relate and connect ideas and concepts I am teaching them with media (more so than situations) from their own lives, not only TV and movies, but music, video games and their AR books. Information gleaned from such sources tend to stay with students longer (I think) for two reasons: 1) they are more inclined to remember something they heard or saw multiple times such as a TV show or movie and 2) they remember information they learned while watching something they considered entertaining.