A Research-Based Argument in Favor of Low-Stakes Intermittent Testing in Math Classrooms
Abstract: The act of testing students on a knowledge set increases their ability to produce the same information later. This phenomena, aptly named the “testing effect”, has been documented heavily by cognitive psychologists (Agarwal, Karpicke, Kang, McDermott, & Roediger, 2008; McDaniel, Roediger & McDermott, 2007; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006a). The connotation of the word “testing” elicits high anxieties and questionable measures of student knowledge, but this is not necessarily the case. An educator can structure the classroom to acknowledge students’ anxieties as well as develop feedback systems that integrate the testing effect to improve student learning. This paper advocates for pedagogical integration of the testing effect into math education to build problem-solving and inductive learning skills.