Teaching to the test - killing students’ motivation for the sake of good grades?

Description

Standardized tests have become a gold standard for assessing students’ competencies, but also the quality of teachers and schools. To help their students score high, many teachers apply a test-centered instruction style, also known as “teaching to the test” (TTT). Although TTT is claimed to help raise test scores, no knowledge exists about how this teaching style affects students’ daily academic lives and experiences.
This study investigated whether TTT is associated with secondary students’ intrinsic motivation, perceived importance, utility, and cost of engaging with the subject, their subject-specific self-efficacy, and test performance. The sample consisted of 1625 11th-grade students, from 30 Austrian high schools, who were surveyed about their experiences in English class. Perceived teaching to the test practices were measured with 4 scales from a newly developed measurement instrument.
Four multiple regression models with gender as a covariate were conducted. Results showed statistically significant positive associations between the TTT scales repetitive exercising, test-taking strategies, and reference to the test with intrinsic motivation, importance, and utility, but not with cost. Repetitive exercising further showed significant positive associations with self-efficacy and a small positive effect on test-performance. An authoritarian teaching style showed statistically significant negative associations with intrinsic motivation, importance, utility, self-efficacy and test performance while having significant positive associations with cost.
Our results suggest that, contrary to current beliefs, TTT, except for authoritarian teaching, might rather enhance than reduce students’ motivation, while not impacting test performance to a significant degree.

Period	26 Aug 2023
Event title	EARLI 2023 – Education as a Hope in Uncertain Times
Event type	Conference
Location	Thessaloniki, GreeceShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International