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Effective Testing in the 21st Century Learning

Diah Fahmawati

ILEP ASU 2015

This paper is written to fulfill the final assignment in

Critical Reading and Writing Course

Assessments are key components of education. They can provide data for teachers

to evaluate their instructional strategies, give students information about their progress in

learning, give administrators information to allocate resources, and give policy makers

data to make good policy in education. There are many kinds of assessments but the most

often used one is objective testing, or the paper and pencil exam. Testing has been used

throughout the history of assessment in education and believed to be the right tool to

measure the ability of learners because of its reliability and validity. Many countries,

including my home country, Indonesia, developed their education system as exam

oriented which relies on high stakes paper and pencil testing to determine students’

ability and teaching efficiency.

Admittedly, countries such as China and Korea whose education systems are

exam-oriented, obtained top five score in PISA (The Program for International Student

Assessment). PISA is an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students'

reading, mathematics, and science literacy every three years. The results of this test not

only reflect the literacy, numeracy, and science skills of students in participating

countries but also inform policymakers about the learning levels of their students relative

to students in other countries and help them set targets for improving education standards.

So from China and Korea’s PISA scores, we can see how effective their exam-oriented

education system is.

Undoubtedly, the exam-oriented education system that is implemented in those

countries has improved the student’s performance in learning. The students learn harder
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when they have a test. The high stakes tests have made the students push themselves to

the limit; otherwise, they will fail and will be left behind. Not only does the high stakes

test become a pressure for students but for the teachers, as well. Every day they teach

how to solve problems on paper and pencil tests and make sure the students will not fail

in tests because the parents and the society would blame them and rate the teacher as

incapable. Teachers press the students by drilling them with tons of paper tests. The good

scorer is rewarded and the low scorer is punished. However, these conditions result in

psychological despair and not a few students end up committing suicide. According to the

WHO statistics (2011), in some countries, 56% of all female suicides worldwide take

place in China. Some surveys in South Korea show about 20% of middle and high school

students attempt suicide. A survey also done in the United Kingdom on 6020 students

(2002) shows that 70% of self-harming teenagers with suicidal thoughts have admitted

that the cause was their concerns about school performance and exams.

And even though, testing should provide an objective and systematic way of

identifying ability, most of the testing, such as multiple choice, does not. That kind of test

does not totally reflect learning ability. During my teaching time, I found the result of our

national standardized exam always debatable. The students who had always performed

well in class gained low scores and the students who under-performed gained high scores.

They did well sometimes just because they chose the right option and the others could not

do well sometimes because they have problems and could not focus on the test. It was

hard to determine their competencies.

The other thing is: how can we evaluate all students’ performances with the same

test when we know they are unique and have their own talents and skills? Tests,

especially standardized tests, are not designed based on student’s multiple intelligences.

Students possess different kinds of intellects and therefore learn, remember, perform, and

understand in different ways (Gardner 1991). Furthermore, Gardner said, "We are all able

to know the world through language, logical-mathematical analysis, spatial

representation, musical thinking, the use of the body to solve problems or to make things,

an understanding of other individuals, and an understanding of ourselves” (Gardner,

1991). Thus students learn in ways that are identifiably distinctive. Exam-oriented

teaching cannot possibly accommodate those students’ multiple intelligences. Testing

students with the same type of exam will only lead to penalizing them for their diverse

intelligences. They will become discouraged to learn and most of the time will believe

that they cannot succeed at school. And if the teachers do not understand their students’

difficulties, the students tend to leave school.

Testing shapes the teaching methods and curriculum. Teacher shorten down the

curriculum and only focus on delivering test materials because they think in the end

students only need to pass the standardized exam. They tend to emphasize content and

neglect to give students a meaningful learning process. They tend to do traditional

teaching which is lecturing and drilling instead of giving them activities to construct their

own knowledge through observations, discussions and data analyses. Teachers lack

innovation in teaching methods to show students how to learn and tend to make tricky to

solve problems which results in misconception. And as a result, students tend to blindly
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believe in textbooks and teachers, memorizing the content instead of grasping the

meaning. They cannot not explain the concept and transfer their knowledge into new

contexts.

Testing can be a mismatch with the purpose of education. Education is about

modeling learners’ minds so that they will be able to face any problem or challenge in

their future life including tests. To give more and better chance to students, teachers and

standardized test designers should adapt their tests to their different learning styles. Such

tests would include visual, auditory and tactile activities. They should give tasks whereby

students analyze, synthesize, discuss and answer questions by using their critical thinking

skills. Besides they should include activities encouraging creativity and transfer of

knowledge because we learn in class what we need outside the classroom. In other terms,

tests should reflect daily-life problems and challenges that we are liable to face and try to

solve. Those skill are needed to meet the 21st century challenges.

In the modern economy, we have Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs as role models

on how creativity is needed in todays’ work. Ironically both of them were university

student dropouts and were not top scorers on tests. Some researchers have proven that

tests, especially standardized tests, do not promote creativity. So, it should take into

account students’ multiple intelligences. Using project based learning can be one of the

solutions to the issue. Some studies about project based learning have proven that project

not only accommodates students with varying learning styles and differences but also lets

teachers have multiple assessment opportunities (Edutopia, 2007). Project based learning
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provides a comprehensive assessment that can measure not only the content of specific

subject but also student performance. In the end, the ultimate goal of school to prepare

students’ success in their future life where they need life-skills rather than high test

scores. Thus, exam-oriented education system must be reformed.

References

Education and Suicide http://www.globaleducationmagazine.com/education-suicide/

An Analysis of China’s Exam-oriented Education System

http://www.slideshare.net/lizhiao/an-analysis-of-exam-oriented-education-system-

1?related=1

Multiple Intelligences http://www.tecweb.org/styles/gardner.html

Why Is Project-Based Learning Important? http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-

learning-guide-importance

PISA: the overview https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/