Conducting Educational Research

CHAPTER 2
anything about the information from that period. In essence, most testwiseness
skills lie in the ability to recognize faults in question design, helpful patterns, and
well established strategies. Others emphasize the pre-test preparation that must
occur, or skills to overcome reading comprehension, or to alleviate test anxiety. At
the high school level, the question that arises is whether or not students have received
ample amounts of coaching in order to be well versed in the art of testwiseness.
Standardized exams ultimately determine the suitability for seniors in high
school to qualify for post-secondary admission. With their future weighing in their
minds, the stakes certainly could not be higher. Not only do grade twelve standardized
exams determine success or failure for students, undeniably by extension,
they also are perceived to indicate the quality of the instructor. Staffrooms in every
school are often filled with the moans of teachers stressing about their students’ test
performance and, by extension, the image that it will relay on their methodologies.
Testwiseness also forces teachers to tiptoe the precarious line of morals and ethics
while preparing students for exams. As a result, teaching testwiseness to students
may run the risk of spoon feeding information to our students, or simply teaching
to the test. Ultimately, because of high stakes exams teachers feel constricted to
“lock down” the curriculum and feel unable to explore areas of interest that do not
directly apply to the content of the exam. As aforementioned, there are definite
problems that arise from issues that pertain to testcoaching and testwiseness.
The focus of this study then, is to attempt to affect positive academic improvement
upon grade 12 social studies students through providing them with moral and
helpful testwiseness tips. Students must be reminded on a continual basis of the
importance of writing an exam with a critical mind. Often, as classroom teachers,
we mention these skills in passing somewhere at the beginning of the semester. Or
worse, we assume senior high students have already acquired the aforementioned
test taking cleverness. Why not provide students with reminders of these skills on
the day of the exam? Why not revisit these skills without the subject becoming
overburdened or obtrusive upon the students? Through the comparison of student
performance on the exact same exam before the implementation of an “improved
testwiseness workshop” and after it, this study will correlate test writing skills with
achievement.
The purpose of this study is to determine if providing a testwiseness reference
sheet for use during the examination will elicit significant improvement in students’
test scores. If students are refreshed of these test-wise skills immediately before
writing an exam, the hope is that it will better serve them in experiencing future
success. Will the current class of students who have received the testwiseness
intervention perform significantly better than their past counterparts who did not
receive it all?
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