Marta Chwalka
Education
702.22
Table of Contents :
Introduction:
Statement of the Problem
Review of Literature
Statement of the Hypothesis
Statement of the Problem
With the current and rising concern about the
quality of public education and our increasing reliance
on test scores to measure academic achievement
there is a growing number of students who
experience test anxiety. Also, with increased
“expectations regarding the complexity of work to be
mastered at earlier developmental age’’ ( Turner et
al., 1993 ) test –anxious students feel overwhelmed
and they self-doubt their abilities to perform.
Students with high test anxiety feel tense, fearful
and worried in evaluative situations; they perceive
testing situations as threatening. Students who
experience test anxiety display lower self-esteem
and negative self-concept. Often feelings of
helplessness and uncertainty prevail during testing
situations. Therefore, in my research I will
investigate the effect of test anxiety on academic
achievement.
What test-anxiety means to me?
As a child, I constantly ( everyday) experienced anxiety about
test or oral examination. I have to admit that Mathematics
was my “favorite” area of emotional failure. Never fully
explained by my teacher, I begun to educate myself the best
way I could. The result; bitten nails. By the time I graduated
from school, I realized that learning is a process.
I believe that putting strong emphasis on testing gives a wrong
type of motivation. Instead motivating students to learn, we
portray achievement as a key element to learning.
I am not happy with the fact that some schools use test scores as
their personal confidence boosters. I am worried that the
quality of learning is compromised by high test scores.
Review of Related Literature :
Early research reports that high test- anxious students
performed more poorly when achievement was emphasized.
Test- anxious students are more self-critical and are more
likely to experience task-irrelevant worry responses that
interfere with the performance during examination.
Because of negative, self- centered worry responses are
incompatible with good performance, the high testanxious students also do more poorly on learning tasks, IQ
tests and achievement tests, then do the low test- anxious
students.(Sarson, 1984)
The conception of test anxiety as a situation specific anxiety
trait, with worry and emotionality as major component has
stimulated considerable research on the relative impact of
individual differences in worry and emotionality on test
performance and academic achievement. The worry
component of test- anxiety is described as “primarily
cognitive concern about the consequences of failure.”
(Spielberger, 1978)
Continued...
High level of anxiety causes a low level of achievement. When test- anxiety
occurs the individual's behavior and physiology is effected. The presence
of physiological hyperarousal (sweat, increased heart rate, rapid
breathing) and cognitive obstruction disrupts the ability to formulate and
organize coherent thinking pattern during test. (Wine, 1971).
The Test Anxiety Scale for Children, commonly known as TASC (Sarason et al.,
1960) is a multidimensional measure used to assess test anxiety in
children. In, general, high performance was linked to low anxiety. It’s aim
is to examine the relationship between anxiety and achievement. The
results showed that anxiety relates negatively to school achievement. The
finding were significantly valid across all ethnic groups and grade levels.
However, one particular test reveals boys tendency to “minimize their
fears” (Beidel et al., 1999)
Improving students' academic performance has been a primary issue of
educational research. Strategies designed to deal with test-anxious
students focused on efforts to decrease anxiety while increasing test
“wiseness”. Anxiety management and study skill training are along the main
solutions.( Barret et al., 2001)
Hypothesis :
HR: Test-Anxiety of the 4th grade
students negatively effects academic
achievement.