Standardized Tests and the American School System
I chose to share this video because I have a lot in common with the students in video. Looking back on my more than 15 years of study, I spent almost all my time studying for exams. The learning process in the classroom and cram school made me feel depressed, and I didn’t think the knowledge I learned for the test would be much helpful to my later life, because I almost forgot most of the content after the test.
Hickey & Zuiker (2005) believed that standardized test and market-oriented accountability system are the traditional cognition of learning, because the knowledge learned by standardized test is divided into parts and established through motivation and reinforcement. This is largely contrary to constructivism, because constructivism emphasizes the conceptual analysis of higher levels of the individual. People construct new knowledge and interpret the information in the context by perceiving the subjective initiative of knowledge. The students in this video apparently have a negative attitude towards standardized tests, and they believe that the results did not affect their personal achievements, which in turn curbed their motivation.
While schools try to create innovative programs, the energy and time required for testing takes away students’ freedom. This is obviously contradictory. The self-actualization in the five needs created by Maslow (1943) emphasizes the different creativity formed by individual differences. The limitations of the classroom need to be opened up and extended to a variety of scenarios to find ways to develop students’ strengths and interests. Students are not industrial machines, nor are they servants of society.
References：
Hickey, D. & Zuiker, S. (2005). Engaged Participation: A Sociocultural Model of Motivation With Implications for Educational Assessment. Educational Assessment, 10(3), 277-305.
Maslow, A. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50.
Psychological study: Huiling Su & Jianing Chi 
Hello!
This is so cool what’s the little girl was doing at the beginning of the video, the experiment for her school science class. I’m sure she will surely remember a lot from that! I agree also that more than often, there is the pressure associated with the content of the curriculum to be taught, so less place for constructivism and built own knowledge.
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I agree with almost every word of yours because I have the same experience and the same thought with you. students should have diversity but standard test made them almost the same. educators should consider this problem and find a better way to solve the contradiction.
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I think most Asian countries students have the same experience as yours. Intensive training on test skills, doing mock exams paper. When I was in secondary school, I did recent 10 years past papers in Accounting in a summer, and, we did constant timed text in class. I can only recall very little activity in class which actually creativity involved.
What I feel upset is, we have so much wonderful training to be a teacher, say, how to creative a classroom with love, with good learning atmosphere, with good relationship among students. However, the real world telling us to get our students to have good grade as the upmost goal. I had many lovely students who may not academically best but they are good teenagers. I surfed Facebook last few weeks, and I read a magazine report which actually interviewed my formal student. Now she is doing her own business making tailor made fashions with recycle materials. She was a typical HK student with fair public exam score, way not good enough to get into university. But now, she has her career which is doing something good to our planet!
Honestly, I don’t think getting good score, going into university is the only way to be a good person.
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Hi!
i totally agree with your idea because I have a same experience with you. Meanwhile, in China, most students are forced to adapt to the learning environment. Therefore, they only have to focus on exam and spend more time in extracurricular tutoring class. However, I do not think that poor students should be denied because everyone has different abilities and different areas of expertise.
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I can’t agree with you any more. Children are not machines. Educators have come up with a number of excellent educational methods to try to change the existing teaching system, but the education department seems not to be interested in this, and still uses the simplest and easiest methods for administrators to deal roughly with education. Teachers are leaving the profession at an unprecedented rate. In this situation, not only students but also teachers are under great pressure，according to Coulter and Abney(2009) a third of new teachers leave within four years and more than 50 per cent within seven years. Reasons for leaving are stress, anxiety or burnout. Schools really need to be changed.
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Great. I agree with your opinion. because we are living in the same learning environment before. In my opinion, education system need to be reform. Teachers need to offering students more opportunities to connect themselves to the reality.
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