Education is one of the most important variables necessary to achieve success in any professional field. There are many different types of education, but the one we’re exposed to in primary schools and high school is often seen as inadequate.
Yet, most students who show good mastery of this level of educational knowledge, tend to be successful when their education niches down into more specialized fields. So how can you test educational knowledge? Let’s find out!
Understanding the Importance of Education
We all know the benefits of education. Learning about how the world works is the only way of understanding why certain things work the way they do and why certain events take place. While no one is really questioning the benefits of higher education, it’s the primary and secondary stage of education that is frequently under fire. Critics are constantly pointing out the overwhelming amount of factual data that is being served to children and young adults, citing that “most of that knowledge is useless”. That being said, the basic educational knowledge that most of these critics talk about is building an important foundation necessary for further growth.
In most cases, it’s not the curriculum itself that’s the issue — it’s the way it’s being taught to students. The only way of measuring the amount and quality of retained knowledge is through tests.
Testing Educational Knowledge the Easy Way
Educational knowledge, although broad, can still be divided into several categories. Things like math, grammar, and similar classifications exist and need to be taken into account when trying to test educational knowledge.
One of the fastest ways to do so would be to test each individual subject with a targeted test. There are standardized tests you can use which will give you a solid idea of any student’s proficiency in any particular subject.
That being said, taking each individual test often introduces different variables that might make it difficult to come up with an overall result.
The solution would be to find a service where you can test everything, all at once. The professionals behind Online Eleven Plus exams point out that covering all subjects with one series of tests will greatly help in this matter. In fact, using these tests might give you the best idea of where your student is at in terms of knowledge.
Ask Your Student to Become the Teacher
Different people use different means of internalizing new knowledge. On a similar note, different people react differently to certain forms of testing. For example, some who are great with pulling knowledge out of their memory during a quiz, may not be as successful in front of a commission or vice versa.
All that being said, asking your students to teach the knowledge you’re interested in testing to another student tends to work for everyone. Mind you, teaching is absolutely the best form of learning. You not only need to have a basic understanding of the subject at hand, but you also need to know it well enough to make someone else understand.
Asking a person to teach you any snippet of educational knowledge is the best way to gauge just how well they understand the matter at hand. Depending on the subject, this form of “testing” can prove to be binary as they will either be able to teach or they won’t. Whatever the case may be, you’ll have your results.
Testing Educational Knowledge Through Real-World Situations
Despite the fact that a solid chunk of educational knowledge is often attacked as being too “dry” and impractical, there are ways of incorporating educational knowledge into potential real-world situations. We’re not talking about “Jonny has 10 apples and Mark has 5” types of problems either.
Try to test different concepts through real-world situations people face every day. If the person you’re testing is a teenager, present them with a problem that will have them solving calculating the percentage of taxes they need to pay as a fictional employee (or a real one if they work). Show them that all the math they’ve done actually comes in handy in certain situations.
Naturally, testing math, physics, and other natural sciences are much easier. But, there are ways of testing history or current affairs this way as well. Whether you’ll be successful or not will mainly depend on your creativity as a person conducting the test. As far as reading and grammar go, you can achieve the same level of engagement through different reading apps or other modern means. These apps will provide a simple and practical way for you to improve your grammar and reading comprehension without adding too much stress in the process.
Can Frequent Testing Improve Knowledge Retention?
This question, although popular, has a rather nuanced answer. Frequent testing can improve knowledge retention but only if the testing phase is conceptual. In other words, you’ll need to present your student with a form of test that will keep them engaged and interested. We’ve already mentioned a few methods that fit this description, and they’ll work just fine for most subjects.
Forcing a form of standardized testing in an effort to enhance knowledge retention often leads to negative effects. Constant quizzes and multiple-choice tests won’t engage your student to confirm and internalize the knowledge they’ve gained in school. On the contrary, in most cases you’ll find that the student is struggling to cram as much as possible to pass the test, only to completely flush all of that information the moment a test is done. Additionally, constant testing at home while an individual is attending school will only cause unnecessary stress to that person.
The scope of educational knowledge is constantly changing, as it should. After all, the world is constantly changing as well. What may have been the norm yesterday, could potentially be irrelevant tomorrow. That being said, certain concepts are a constant that most likely won’t be changing anytime soon.
Subjects such as math, physics, biology, and others, can only be updated and improved over time, but rarely ever will you see that something has been taken out of these subjects. The level of math, physics, biology, and chemistry that is taught in middle schools and high schools is backed up by empirical data that has been tested time and time again.
