Abstract

Educational assessment is considered as one of the most important aspects of higher education and most educational institutions rely on tests to determine students’ performance, achievements and certification. However, extensive literature reviewed indicates that no study has been conducted to determine the effects of frequent testing on female students’ performance in Physics. This study investigated the effect of frequent testing on the performance of female students in some selected Physics concepts. The study used quantitative research approach and action research design. Fifty (50) second year female science students formed the study participants. Data was collected using tests. The experimental data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics and one-sample t-test. The mean score for each student for the six week-period was determined. The overall mean score for the entire students was determined to give an idea of students’ general performance in the frequent tests after both reading assignments and teaching of concepts. The results of the study showed that the mean scores obtained by students after teaching concepts (μ=6.35) was better than mean scores of students after reading assignment (μ=2.74). In addition, the results clearly showed a statistically significant difference in the performance of students after the teaching concepts (p<0.05). These results further suggest that frequent testing after teaching constitutes an effective way of improving the performance of female students in Physics. The study recommends that science teachers in general, and Physics teachers in particular, should employ frequent testing in their teaching and learning process as testing makes students learn ahead which in effect affect their performance in Physics positively.

1. Introduction

Educational institutions rely on tests to qualify students for important certifications. Frequent testing is therefore pivotal for the existence of academic work in educational institutions ¹. A greater understanding of the benefits of taking frequent tests can serve to defuse some of the pains that students experience when writing a test. For instance, Bangert-Drowns, Kulik, & Kulik ² have noted that frequent testing would increase instructional effectiveness and would encourage students to study and review more often. According to these authors, this frequent testing would enable more concrete progress towards the shared goal of improving educational outcomes. Testing with feedback produces the strongest positive effect on achievement ³.

It is common knowledge that frequent tests provide an opportunity to measure the performance of students’ academic work. However, it appears teachers have not always been able to test students frequently on concepts because they consider it as time-consuming exercise including its tedious marking processes. Teachers are therefore likely to use show-and-tell observation to determine the academic progress of students. Achieving quality education for all is one of the most powerful and proven antecedent vehicles for sustainable development. This goal ensures that all girls and boys receive quality higher education. The role of tests in ensuring quality education cannot be underestimated. A Plethora studies ^{4, 5, 6} have investigated the effect of frequent administrations of tests on students’ performances in various disciplines. However, no empirical studies have investigated the effects of frequent testing on the performance of female students on physics concepts as well as assessing the perception of female students about frequent testing. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of frequent testing on the performance of female students on some selected physics concepts.

2. Literature Review

The academic literature reviewed covered the following specific areas: the concept of testing, frequency, and benefits of testing to students.

Tests appear to be the most contentious issue in education today. It often creates a wedge between factions of the educational structure, crossing political and social lines ⁷. It is a common knowledge that test provides an opportunity to measure the performance of students’ academic work, however, it appears teachers dislike preparing and grading tests and most students dread taking them. Siedlecki ⁸ viewed tests as an educational tool used to evaluate students’ progress and provide data for instructional planning and decision making. Overton ⁹ also revealed that a test is commonly used interchangeably with assessment or even evaluation. This author, however, contended that test can be distinguished by the fact that a test is one form of an assessment. Overton, therefore, defined test as a method to determine students’ ability to complete certain tasks or demonstrate mastery of a skill or knowledge of content.

A test is an educational tool that is used to examine someone's knowledge of something to determine what he or she knows or has learned. Tests measure the level of skill or knowledge that has been reached. A test can also be defined as detailed or small scale task carried out to identify the candidate’s level of performance and to find out how far the person has learned what was taught or be able to do what he/she is expected to do after teaching ¹⁰. This institute pointed out that people use the terms (test, assessment, and evaluation) interchangeably as revealed earlier. However, in a real sense, they are not the same; a test is an instrument for assessment. Tests involve measurement of candidates’ performance, while evaluation is a systematic way of assessing the success or failure of a program. Evaluation involves assessment but not all assessments are evaluation ¹⁰. Based on the definitions above, taking a test is simply gathering information in a standard way. This study is about gathering the best and most accurate information available.

Plethora studies have considered the benefits of frequency testing ^{11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19}. All these tests reported that frequent test promotes students’ learning because it involves retrieval practice, or thinking back to information previously learned and bringing it to mind, ensures that students are studying regularly throughout the term, not just waiting until just before the big exam to relearn everything at once ¹⁶ and finally increases classroom attendance ¹⁷. This, they said may be more relevant to high schools where attendance may be a problem. These authors explained that when in a class where tests are frequent, students need to be in class in order to take the test and more often come prepared for class. In addition to coming to class, students may pay closer attention to the material when they are expecting to be tested. In the same study, Smith and Weinstein tested this idea by having students learn information in 5 separate segments. In one condition, students were unexpectedly tested in the last segment. In the other condition, students were given a warning about the upcoming test right before studying that segment. Students who received the warning about the upcoming test did better than the group who were not given a warning. But in a third condition, instead of being given a warning, students were simply tested on every one of the 5 segments, which led them to expect a test on the last segment; these students did just as well on that last segment test as those who received the warning. This suggested that expecting a test in and of itself can be beneficial to learning, and one way to set up test expectancy is to keep testing. A well-designed test, according to Kleeman ¹⁵ serves to motivate students and reduce procrastination. Kleeman further said that frequent testing improves metacognitive monitoring by giving students’ scores or self-assessment, they can better predict their knowledge and be more confident about what they know and what they need to know.

Despite the promising results and recommendations made by frequent testing advocates, it appears frequent testing has been criticised on several grounds. Lahey ¹² was also of the view that frequent testing could take time away from instruction, for example, studies have shown that teachers lose between 60 and 110 hours of instructional time in a year because of frequent testing ¹³. Adkins and Linville ¹⁴ on the other hand also asserted that administering tests frequently consumes valuable instructional time that could be used for classroom learning. Therefore, fewer tests perhaps a midterm and final, are common in many Senior High Schools. Some even believe that students would study less when given frequent tests because the overall weight of each test on the overall class grade is lower ¹⁴. With a greater teacher emphasis on tests, some educators maintained that students would start directing all their efforts towards performing well on tests rather than toward learning. Those educators said that too frequent testing would inhibit the integration of larger units of instructional materials and become tedious for students and consequently, it will reduce their enthusiasm about learning. Alade and Kuku ¹⁴ reported that when tests given to students are too frequent, they might not have enough time to deepen their knowledge and to understand the relationships among the range of concepts covered in a given subject, and this has led to the question of how tests are used during students’ learning.

According to Vinz ²⁰, a theoretical framework provides scientific justification for a research. The study used theories of operant conditioning, spacing effect and trace decay of forgetting to better understand the effects of frequent testing on female students’ performance in physics.

Operant conditioning refers to a kind of learning process where a response is made more frequently by reinforcement. When behaviour is repeatedly reinforced, it becomes learned behaviour ²¹. McLeod ²² opined that behaviour which is reinforced tends to be repeated and strengthened and behaviour which is not reinforced tends to be extinguished and weakened. For example, in operant conditioning, a voluntary response is then followed by a reinforcing stimulus. In this way, the voluntary response (e.g. studying for a test or an examination) is more likely to be done by the individual frequently. In this study, it was hypothesized that learning frequently in a spaced fashion could produce understanding and retention as a consequence.

The second theory employed to better understand the effects of frequent testing in the teaching-learning process was the spacing effect. Vlach, Catherine, and Nate ²³ described the spacing effect as the finding that long-term memory is enhanced when learning events are spaced apart in time, rather than massed in immediate succession. Learning requires repetition, and in view of this, research on human cognition has shown that learning can be significantly affected by the way in which repetitions are scheduled. For example, it has been observed that students retain a greater number of vocabulary definitions when a given term and definition are repeated approximately every five (5) minutes, rather than when the same term and definition are repeated consecutively. The learning advantage for information that is repeated in a spaced fashion is commonly referred to as the spacing effect ²⁴.

The third theory employed by the study was the trace decay of forgetting proposes that forgetting occurs as a result of the lapse of time ²⁵. This author explained that the memory traces are formed in our neurological systems. If the learned processes are not used for a long time, the traces get faded. Similar study by Kim ²⁶ also reported that the information studied before a test is usually remembered during the test. However, as soon as the test is over, the information seems to immediately fade, mostly fading beyond recovery.

3. Materials and Methods

A research design comprises steps that are used to collect data. Blakstad ²⁷ explains research design as a structure of any scientific work. This author indicates research design gives direction and systematic steps in research. This study adopted an action research design because the focus of the study was to improve on the performance of students through frequent testing. The researcher gave reading assignments on the concepts to be taught. A test was then given afterward to find out how students demonstrate their understanding of the concept. Not only did the researcher use the test to quantify students’ performance but also identify skills and attitude such as critical thinking skills. This was meant to determine the ability of students to use the knowledge and its application as required in the physics syllabus such as the ability to perform simple calculations. With regards to calculations, the researchers paid attention to the ability of students to determine the subject of an equation and also determine appropriate SI unit of Physical quantities. The researchers also used the test to measure the ability of students to recall facts at level one in the cognitive domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning.

In the second stage lessons on some selected concepts in physics were taught to students. The feedback from a test was incorporated into the teaching of the next concept. The third stage was to find out how well students demonstrated their understanding of the concept and mastering of skills and expected attitude from students. This was done in all the subsequent tests. A period of six weeks was used throughout the design and after this period 12 different sets of tests were taken by students.

The population for the study was all science students in SHS in the Greater Accra Metropolis. The sample population for this study was second-year female science students in SHS in the Greater Accra Metropolis. Year two science students were chosen because of their low performance in physics exhibited in year one coupled with the fact that they were not under any pressure to write any external examination.

The study used tests to gather data. The test items used were validated by two experienced teachers who have taught physics for fifteen years in the school. The test items were subjected to scrutiny by these experienced teachers. They pointed out a few mistakes such as spelling mistakes and poorly worded questions. They also found that some questions were too ambiguous and others very lengthy. These mistakes as pointed out by these experience teachers were corrected for clarity and understanding.

All the 12 different sets of test items were pilot tested on form three (3) science students in non-selected school to establish the reliability and validity of the items. The reliability analysis of the instruments was performed statistically and the Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.74 was obtained for all the items. This value (0.74) was higher than the 0.70 that is generally accepted in social science research ²⁸. Hence the alpha value obtained in this study for all the test items used was good. This means that the coefficient level was higher for the instruments to be used and therefore, the internal consistency of the instruments was thus reliable. Reading assignments were given to students and tests were conducted on them afterward throughout the six-week period.

The researcher taught for six weeks. In the first and second week, the concept of “temperature and heat” were taught whilst the concept of “thermometry” was taught in the third and fourth weeks. “Kinetic theory of gases” was treated in the fifth and sixth weeks. All the concepts were taught by the same researcher using the same 60 minutes duration and between the hours of 7 and 8 in the morning. The concepts to be taught were given to students (sample population) as a reading assignment. Students were advised to read from two Physics Test Books Approved by the Ghana Education Service for the SHS. The reading assignment was given to students two days (normally on Fridays) before the first test. The tests were given to find out those students who read and their level of comprehension of the concepts read. The scoring scheme was based on students’ ability to use knowledge and apply knowledge as prescribed in their Physics Syllabus and ability of students to perform simple calculations. Another test, with the same characteristics as the first one, was given to the students after the concepts was taught. The same test items were used before and after to ensure fair testing. This was to assess the extent to which learning had taken place as well as the skills mastered. Both tests were marked using the same scoring scheme, discussed and recorded into the students’ record book for analysis.

4. Data Analysis

Data analysis was done using SPSS 21.0 Statistical Package Program. Statistical tests used in data analysis were t-test and descriptive statistics. According to Awanta and Asiedu-Addo ²⁹, the Statistical Package for Social Science (S.P.S.S.) is by far one of the best known and widely used software for the statistical analysis of social data in educational research. Test items reliability and internal consistency were determined using Cronbach’s alpha statistics ³⁰. The calculated values were greater than 0.8 indicating that items on the instruments have sufficient internal consistency ^{30, 31}. Descriptive statistics was used to determine the mean and standard deviations of the students’ performances. The p-value of less than 0.05 and 95% confident interval were used to gauge whether the difference in mean test scores for each student was statistically significant.

5. Results

The data collected during the six week-period was analysed using descriptive statistics and t-statistics. The outcomes of the analysis were displayed in Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3 below.

Data presented in Table 1 above shows descriptive statistics of performance of students after teaching concepts and after reading assignments. These results indicate that the mean scores of performance of students after teaching concepts (μ = 6.35) was better than mean scores of students after reading assignment (μ = 2.74).

Data presented in Table 2 and Table 3 highlight the results of one sample t-test of frequent testing after reading assignment and after teaching of concepts, respectively. These results indicate that performance of students after teaching concepts (ranged between: mean difference = 5.8333, t = 12.223, df = 5, p < 0.000 to 7.16667, t = 7.578, df = 5, p < 0.001) was better than performance of students after reading assignments (ranged between: mean difference = 1.83333, t = 3.051, df = 5, p < 0.028 to mean difference = 5.3333, t = 16.00, df = 5, p < 0.000). The results further suggest that frequent testing after teaching concepts enhances students’ performances and this is evidence in the mean differences of students’ performances.

6. Discussion

The study investigated the effect of frequent testing on the performance of female students on some selected Physics concepts. Data presented in Table 1 shows descriptive statistics of performance of students after teaching and after reading assignment. This results indicate that performance of students after teaching was better than after reading assignment. This might be due to the fact that they study regularly since they knew of the regularity of testing of concepts. This finding is in line with a study conducted by Vaessen et al. ³² and Leeming ³³ who reported that students value test especially when they are frequently tested on reading assignment concepts. These authors further explained that when students know they will be frequently tested on reading assignments, it prompted them to study regularly, and upon receiving regular feedback on the test results. Though students had not been taught the concepts, however, they appear to realize that any time a reading assignment was given a test followed. Hence their preparation for the impending tests. The assertion was also made by Phelps ¹² who analysed several hundreds of studies on the effect of testing on students’ achievement and found that more frequent testing led to better performance. In addition, Phelps further demonstrated that testing with feedback produces the strongest positive effect on achievement especially when it is done frequently. Further, recent studies from The University of Texas at Austin have found that a combination of frequent testing and immediate feedback plays a key role in improving students’ preparation and performance in selected physics concepts ³⁴. It is therefore evidence that giving feedback to students after testing contributed in no small way to their performances.

Apart from the majority of students who showed weekly improvement in their performance before the teaching of concepts, there were, however, some few students who did not show clear progression in performance. For example, students with serial numbers 21 through to 35 (Table 1) showed a lack of progression in performance. Perhaps these students lacked a proper understanding of the concepts since they were not taught. However, the majority showed progression in performance confirming the potency of regular testing. Alade and Kuku ¹⁹ were also of the opinion that testing too frequently on reading assignment concepts without being taught will not deepen students’ knowledge and will not know the relationship among the range of concepts. Hence, the students show high performance after they are taught. However, after they were taught the concepts as indicated in Table 1, almost all the students experienced high improved performance than when not taught. The mean scores obtained by each student improved significantly and consistently. These observations from the current study confirm that of Gooblar ¹⁶, who noted that frequent testing ensures that students study regularly throughout the term, not waiting till the end of term examination

Data presented in Table 2 clearly showed a statistically significant difference in the performance of students after the teaching concepts (p<0.05). This shows that with the introduction of frequent testing after teaching students are likely to perform better. Many good reasons exist to expect frequent testing to benefit both teaching and learning. For instance, Walvoord and Anderson ³⁵ stated that frequent tests could be used for teaching. The more effective and regular the test, the more students prepare and the more quality learning occurs. Frequently testing students also boost students’ ability to learn concepts. These authors concluded that frequent tests encouraged the kind of thinking that was essential not just for retention but also for mentally organizing the acquisition of new material. Recent studies from The University of Texas at Austin have found that a combination of frequent testing and immediate feedback plays a key role in improving preparation and performance in selected physics concepts ³⁴.

7. Conclusion

The study investigated the effect of frequent testing on the performance of female students in some selected Physics concepts taught in Senior High Schools. The study revealed that students’ performance after both reading assignments and teaching of concepts had improved with the later assuming maximum expectations. This suggests that the frequent tests that followed the reading assignment and teaching of concepts constantly made the students’ adequately prepared ahead of the tests and these consequently improve their performance. However, the study revealed that performance of students after reading assignments was not up to expectation suggesting that the reading assignments without prior lessons do not make students have a deep understanding of what they have read. The study strongly suggests investigating the effects of frequent testing on students’ performance after reading assignments in long-term observations and with larger samples for better generalization of the findings. In spite of these precincts, the results of the study has provided strong theory-based evidence on the effects of frequent testing on female students’ performance in Physics.

8. Recommendations for Instruction

The study recommends that physics teachers should employ frequent testing in their teaching and learning process as testing makes students, particularly female students learn ahead which in effect improves their performance in physics.

Acknowledgements

The authors express their unreserved appreciation to all the authors whose works were cited in this study and the students and staff of the study school.

Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no conflicts of interest exist.

References