A headline in Friday’s NY Times caught my attention.
To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test.
It was in the Times’ Science section. It could just have been the ad on late night television claiming you can lose weight by holding shaking dumb bells.
But the problem wasn’t that the research was junk science. The problem was junk reporting.
This snake oil is the second most emailed story in the NY Times today.
SchoolsMatter points out:
It’s fair to say the assumption is that we’re talking about standardized variety, or some kind of hybrid multiple choice and extended response format.
Not so. Not even close.
The “test” we’re talking about here is simply writing down everything you remembered after reading a for a given amount of time (I believe it was 45 minutes in the study). Free-recall. No multiple choice. No grading of the material. That was a more effective way of studying than putting together a concept map. That’s what the study really looked at.
But the Times’ interpretation of the story got picked up by the rubes at Huffington Post and other poor excuses for news media and the Reformies at Flypaper got suckered by it too.
Fred Klonsky 
I think the whole country needs a statistics 101 course… anyone in charge of using data in education should take a whole lot more than that. I see data being misused all the time in CPS, and people who should know better definitely don’t. The Times headline is a bit misleading, because the study was about using recall tests as a WAY to study, but snappy headlines get people to read the story. Anyone who just reads a headline and not the story probably shouldn’t write about the story.
That said, I read the article and it didn’t seem to imply that we should do standardized testing as a way to help students learn. The idea is that a good way to learn material is to test yourself on it… we teach this technique every day at my school. I have my students take Cornell style notes so they can easily quiz themselves on the material they learn in class and from what they read. This requires that they look at a term and must recall what the term means, or look at the description of a concept and connect it to the name of the concept or the person who discovered it. It isn’t rocket science, and it’s clearly supported by lots of research into semantic and elaborative processing in memory. This isn’t a way to teach critical thinking, but it is a way to learn content like the 2000 new terms my AP psychology students must learn during my class.
When students test themselves and check the answer and write about the correct answer, they tend to remember the material well. The Times article pointed out that even inferential understanding is enhanced with this type of recall practice. This ain’t test prep and it ain’t standardized anything. It’s called learning by building meaningful cognitive connections. The times clearly specified that it was retrieval testing via long form writing, not recognition testing so the idea that the study had anything to do with multiple choice tests is just ignorance or sloppy reading.
I’m sure there are types of content that might be learned better with concept mapping or diagrams, but I’d bet that covering up a portion of a concept map and trying to recall what goes in it, and then reviewing the material would help you learn and remember the content better.
Nah, Phillip. The headline wasn’t just snappy. It was wrong. It totally misstated what the research had suggested.
It is a rare classroom teacher who thinks that there should be no assessment of learning or one who doesn’t use a range of techniques.
In the current political atmosphere, a NY Times Science article that tells people that students should study less and test more has a political purpose.