The Effects Of Test Wiseness Training Upon The Reading Achievement Test Anxiety And Locus Of Control Of Elementary School Children

Author : Tamela Min Scharnagl
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780496026425
Total Pages : 58 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (264 download)

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Download or read book The Effects of Test-taking Strategies on Students' Reading Achievement written by Tamela Min Scharnagl and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Standardized assessments are becoming more popular in education due to an increased focus on accountability. Controversy arises about how to improve the reading achievement of elementary school students. the federal government is mandating that standardized test scores be improved and that teachers be held accountable for their students' results. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), forty percent of fourth grade students have been performing below basic on standardized tests in reading for the last forty years. From year to year, little or no change has been noted in reading achievement. In this study, the relationship between reading achievement of low-performing third-grade students and the addition of test-taking skills to curricular instruction was examined. the purpose of this experimental study was to test the theory that an increase in standardized reading test scores from pretest to posttest of students who received additional instruction on test-taking skills would be significantly higher than those of students who did not receive additional instruction on test-taking skills. the study was conducted at a rural elementary school on the southeast coast of Georgia, using fifteen third-grade students in both the experimental group (those who were administered the additional skills) and in the control group (those who received no additional skills). the independent variables were the pretest score and the experimental indicator (whether or not they were members of the experimental group). the dependent variable was the net change in test score from pretest to posttest. It was hypothesized that the standardized reading test scores from pretest to posttest of students who received additional instruction on test-taking skills would show statistically significant scores that were higher than those of students who did not receive the treatment effect. Quantitative analysis of the data through analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) indicated that such instruction showed statistically significant results in favor of the hypothesis. This study has implications for educators; administrators, and curriculum developers as a means to further comply with national educational directives as delineated in the No Child Left Behind Act.