Photo by V. Miller
April 12, 2006
What Do You Expect?
What Do You Expect? Does Expectation of Difficulty Level Affect Student Test Performance?
Joanna Guy, 14, Oakland, Md.
Finalist, Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge, 2005
Project background: Joanna noticed that everyone seemed to have an opinion about the No Child Left Behind Act. She wanted some data to test these opinions. She hypothesized that student achievement on tests would decline as the perceived difficulty of the tests increased. Her goal was to find out whether teachers could manipulate student expectations to improve test performance.
Tactics and results: Joanna developed three vocabulary tests of equivalent difficulty (as shown by administering them to a control group). She labeled one a sixth-grade test, one an eighth-grade test, and one a tenth-grade test. She provided instructions about testing procedures to a group of eighth-grade homeroom teachers. The teachers administered the tests to 154 eighth graders over a 3-week period. Students used their locker numbers instead of their names to ensure confidentiality.
 |
| Photo by V. Miller |
When Joanna tabulated the results, she found that students performed significantly better on the "sixth-grade" test than they did on the other two tests. She concluded that if students expect an easy test, they perform better on it.
Read the latest science fair news
Get a science fair tip
Browse a list of science fair topics
Talk Back:
Do you have any comments about this ScienceFairZone? Send them
to us using the form below.
|
SNK RSS Feed 
