Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia
[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]
For many years I conducted a school-based teacher education program in a school district in British Columbia’s lower mainland. Students in one of the district’s schools were eager to enroll in the classroom of a teacher whom I will call Peggy. Peggy worked hard to make her class an inviting and successful environment for all students. But, on that score, she was no different than any of the other teachers in that school, one in which the parents and students held high expectations.
Students in Peggy’s classes performed better than the students in the classrooms of her peers. But, before I reveal the not-so-secret sauce that Peggy employed, let me put in context the impact of what Peggy did that the other teachers did not do.
The performance of students the classes taught by Peggy’s peers averaged about 75% (C) with almost 70% of the students achieving between 55% and 95%. The remaining students scored better or worse. The class average of students that Peggy taught was ten percentage points higher, a B.
Teachers eager to find ways to produce a genuine improvement in student performance can do what Peggy consistently did, and it is supported by a vast body of evidence. When I say vast, the evidence comes from 222 research reports with data from approximately 50,000 students.[1]
I first learned about Peggy’s technique from observing students in the hallway. Most of the school’s students were engaged in the typical pattern of student behaviour and misbehaviour as they moved from on class to another. Peggy’s students were atypical. Most of them passed from their previous class to Peggy’s with their notebooks open.
I found that the students were preparing for the brief quiz with which each of Peggy’s classes began. As soon as the students crossed the threshold of the classroom, they were expected to complete a brief quiz about the previous day’s lesson. Peggy collected the quizzes (they were paper based at the time) and, then, briefly reviewed the results.
The effectiveness of Peggy’s practice of regular quizzes was confirmed by the 2021 study refenced below. The findings from that meta-analysis have several implications for teaching practice:
- Class quizzes boost student achievement to a noticeable extent.
- Quizzes are more effective in enhancing learning compared to other strategies such as restudying, concept mapping, and other elaborative strategies.
- The format of the quiz does not significantly impact the effectiveness of test-enhanced learning. Different test formats, such as fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice, short answer, etc., all contribute to enhancing student learning.
- Quizzing reinforces the retention of tested knowledge and enhances the learning of untested knowledge, though the effect size for untested knowledge is slightly smaller.
- Providing feedback following quizzes like Peggy did significantly increases learning gains because feedback helps students understand their mistakes and learn from them.
- The
number of quiz/test repetitions positively correlates with the effectiveness of
test-enhanced learning. The more times class content is quizzed (Peggy did it
every day), the larger the learning gains.
- Test-enhanced learning works across different levels of education, including elementary school, middle school, high school, and post secondary, and it consistently facilitates achievement across different subjects.
There is no doubt that the students Peggy taught (and their parents who sought Peggy as teacher of their children) recognized what has been confirmed by the meta-analysis: Incorporating regular quizzes or tests in the classroom is an effective strategy that enhances student learning and academic achievement.
[1] Yang, Chunliang, et al. "Testing (quizzing)
boosts classroom learning: A systematic and meta-analytic review."
Psychological bulletin, vol. 147, no. 4, 04/2021, pp. 399-435,
, doi:10.1037/bul0000309.