Module 30 Blog Post 1

An information processing technique that would be helpful for memorization would be chunking.  By chunking different groups of information together it’s easier for individuals to remember the chunks and encode them into their LTM.  Also by chunking material they can relate new information to old information already in their LTM helping them to better remember the information.  One pro of using this to prepare students for standardized testing is that teachers would not be teaching to test, but rather teaching information so that students can learn it and better understand it so that when the information is on the test they’ll have learned it in a way that they can remember it.  A con to using chunking is that it might not be the best method for all students; a teacher should use a variety of methods to help students encode information into their LTM so that all students have an equal opportunity to learn the information. 

High stakes standardized testing might cause learned helplessness, as a student grows older.  When low-achieving students use to have positive views of themselves until they received feedback about their performance.  When they realize that their performance was low, they may have low motivation and more test anxiety.  They’ll develop learned helplessness because they’ll attribute these repeated failures as out of their control.  They may begin to attribute their failed behaviors on the test to external factors such as the difficult of the standardized test. 

A learning goal is for students to understand the format of the tests.  A teacher might use the social cognitive theory in which she will demonstrate appropriate ways to take the test and how to best prepare students for the standardized test.  She might show examples of how she would answer certain questions on the test so that students can do the same.  This is not a good method for facilitating student learning because instead of teaching them material to learn, the teacher is teaching them how to take the test.