Testing, Motivation and Learning

Abstract

First paragraph: It is reasonable to expect that testing has an impact on the way pupils learn and on their motivation to learn. The questions we are addressing here are: what is the nature of that impact and does pupils' learning benefit from it? Pupils need to know how their learning is progressing. Teachers also need to know how their pupils are progressing, to guide both their own teaching and the pupils' further learning. Many others-parents, other teachers, employers-will have an interest in looking back on what has been learned by an individual pupil, often using a grade or mark as an overall summary of that learning. In addition, there has been an increasing tendency for the results from testing and assessment of learning (‘summative assessment') to be used, when combined for whole groups of pupils, as indicators of the performance of teachers, schools and the education system.