This study was implemented to examine the effects of a Test-Taking Strategy on test anxiety and metacognition of elementary students with learning disabilities (LD) and general students.
The experimental group which participated in this study consist...
This study was implemented to examine the effects of a Test-Taking Strategy on test anxiety and metacognition of elementary students with learning disabilities (LD) and general students.
The experimental group which participated in this study consisted of sixth-grade students in C Elementary School in Ansan, Gyeonggi-do. Each experimental and control groups were composed of twenty-eight general students and two students with LD. The experimental group was exposed to the strategy instruction of Test-Taking Strategy, and the control group was taught by a standard curriculum. from March 26 to September 10, 2009, this experimentation was implemented with thirty-five sessions.
The 'PURES' test-taking strategy, which was used in this study, was originally developed by researchers at the Kansas University Center for Research on Learning (KU-CRL), and it was adopted by Youn Ock Kim for Korean.
The strategy is composed of seven steps and seventeen substeps. This study consists of eight stages to instruct the strategy. A pretest and posttest was applied to control group to compare the effects of the strategy instruction.
The collection data was analyzed by t-test between groups after the pre-test and the post-test of anxiety and metacognition were taken, and Test-Taking Strategy usages.
The results of this study are as follows.
First, the elementary students with learning disabilities (LD) mastered the strategy fluently.
Second, the experimentation group with LD and the genaral students displayed a reduction of test anxiety.
Third, the experimentation group with LD and the general students showed an improvement in metacognition.
As a result, this Test-Taking Strategy was effective for the reduction of test anxiety and the improvement of metacognition in students with learning disabilities and general students. However, there seemed to be some limitations to generalize the results due to small samples in this study. Therefore, it implies that more research should be duplicated with more subjects.