Reflection: The Process of Learning Is More Important Than the Outcome (Test Scores)

I absolutely love teaching AP Biology because the content is extremely rich, engaging, relevant, and in-depth. It’s met with the challenge of ensuring students are also being taught in a way where they build the skills and content depth to pass the AP test. Reading posts with both joys and struggles from other AP Biology teachers, it’s met with the same level of excitement for the content depth, but also concerns with ensuring students pass the test. Often times, I notice that the percentage of students passing the test, scoring a 4 or above, or the number of their heads takes precedent over all other aspects of learning.

We often backwards plan from the test or standards (NGSS) and it’s definitely important to integrate backwards planning into curriculum design as a road map for learning, but I genuinely believe that it should not take priority over other aspects of learning like curiosity, real-world skills, and extended learning. As teachers, when all we stress to students are the number that they receive and we use that as a basis for student success, they begin to build their self-efficacy based on the scores that they receive. They become a number according to the test. In the process, when students test well, they feel confident. When students don’t test well, their self-efficacy is chipped away, along with their curiosity, joy, and passion for STEM.

I’m not saying that scores aren’t important because we need some framework for measuring growth and progress, but it is not the end goal. The end goal is to build student curiosity and motivation towards biology and STEM careers. It’s to motivate students to continue learning beyond the classroom and teach them the value of growth mindset and perseverance. When we emphasize to students that a test score is a measure of their success, we are telling students that if they get a 50% on a test, they are not successful. Indirectly, that’s also saying that they have no place in STEM and that they would not make it in these careers.

I started reflecting on what the purpose of tests and benchmarks are for. More specifically, I reflected on why we even need these. They’re metrics for growth and progress. The idea of growth and progress is met with the underlying assumption that they change over time. If that’s the case, then why are so many test scores concrete? Why is a score that a student received in January still the score that they receive in June?

Test scores are often static numbers, but the purpose of testing points to the fact that they should be dynamic. When I emphasize to my students that test scores are an indicator of how successful they are as a student and future STEM professional, I continue to push students away from these careers when they don’t do well on a test. Instead, if I focus on test scores as marks for growth and progress, then I highlight the fact that the score is not an indicator of their success in the future, but something that can be worked on so that they can be success. We want students to have a growth mindset, but our grade books are indicators for a fixed mindset when they’re static.

The process of learning is more important than the outcome. When students receive their scores, they often aren’t perfect scores. As a result, even if they received a score of a 94%, they have areas to grow and master. Similarly, if a student receives a score of 20% on an exam, it’s not an indicator that they are a failure, but an indicator that they now have a guideline towards growth. They know what they need to work on. I encourage this mindset through error analysis sheets and upon the completion of the error analysis sheet, a grade boost because they knew the content more now than they did before. If they’d like to reassess and demonstrate that they know it better now than when they originally took the exam, then why not? If they receive a grade of a 85%, then that’s what should be in the grade book. Not all students learn at the same pace and if one student takes longer to learn, but ultimately learns it, then the grade book should reflect that. That’s a dynamic grade book, a focus on growth mindset, and a statement of what I believe tests are intended for.

If I end up with a class where all 30 of my students received a 4+ on the AP Biology test, but lose all motivation and curiosity to pursue a STEM career, did I succeed or did I fail? If most of my students received a 2, but continue learning well beyond AP Biology because they’re interested in it, later on mastering the content they originally didn’t understand, did I succeed or did I fail? It’s a hard balance between putting pressure on the students to do well on the test, while also going slow enough for them to really dissect their curiosities of the real-world and science. In a perfect world, I’d do both — have all students master all the content and spark their motivation and curiosity for science. In the real-world, there’s a lot of inefficiency, distractions, and external factors. Reflecting on it, I think a balance between the two would be how I approach what testing is, what scores reflect, and the emphasis towards mastery based learning.