News

Too many tests? New research from Institute of Education

New research from the Institute of Education has found that children's emotional well-being may be suffering because of an obsession with tests. Pressure on teachers to make their classes achieve national standards causes them to focus their teaching on how to pass tests. This makes children anxious, stifles their creativity and ruins their confidence in their ability to judge their own work.

Over a two-year period, researchers studied a class of 9- and 10-year-olds and their teachers in a central London primary school to find out how the children understood themselves as learners. One of the research team, Professor Alex Moore, commented: "Although we knew before the research started that classrooms are highly charged emotional sites, we were surprised by just how much children's emotional states can influence their capacity to learn. Feeling good makes learning pleasurable and easy: feeling bad turns it into a struggle, made harder by the expectation of failure."

To read more on this story please visit the Institute of Education website [external link].