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Education and outreach

Education and outreach

Exams hinder critical thought

01 Jun 1998

Physics exams do not encourage students to think correctly about their subject, says Kjetil Kjernsmo, who calls for reforms to the way that students are evaluated

You might not have thought about this analogy before, but exams are rather like experiments. Both are designed to evaluate certain parameters. Lab experiments might measure things like temperature or pressure, while exams test how much students understand and how well they discuss particular ideas. The problem for students – as most physicists would agree – is that exams just do not stand up as valid scientific experiments.

Some students, for example, might work hard throughout the year and then under perform on the day of the exam. Quite literally, they do not give the right results. Others might over perform by simply having identified how to maximize their chances of success – not that you can blame them for doing so, since exam results can affect your chances of getting a job or being given a place on a PhD course. But the biggest problem, as far as I am concerned, is that many exams do not require students to show any signs of “critical thinking”.

Critical thinking is the core of modern science and it should be the basis for all science education. However, some exams actually penalize students for thinking in this way. Don’t get me wrong: I am not complaining about educational evaluation in general, which provides students with important feedback on how efficiently they are working. The problem is that most physics exams encourage students to repeat ideas without thinking, instead of motivating them to learn as much as they can about the subject.

For example, there may have been parts of the syllabus that were badly taught by a particular lecturer, and that could not even be understood after discussions with other students or staff. It would take a lot of courage to try to explain the perceived flaws on an exam paper. Besides, one would hardly have the time to do so. Any attempt at critical thinking might then backfire and give the impression that you just didn’t understand the subject at all. Although it would break all of my principles to simply repeat an explanation that I knew did not stand up, one can only agree that to do so would be the easiest way of getting a good grade.

Another problem with some exams is that you often more or less know what the answers should be, and it is a case of following the right path to the answer as fast and effectively as you can. You might need to know a few tricks along the way, but provided you remember the path or have tackled enough similar questions in the past, that is usually all that it takes. Of course, it helps to understand the subject – but even that is not always what counts. Some universities actually hold special classes at the end of courses to teach students how to do exams and reproduce particular lines of reasoning. To me, this approach means abandoning all attempts at critical thinking – and actually adopting uncritical thinking.

Working practices

Exams also place too much emphasis on puzzle-solving. In a sense, they follow the philosophy of Thomas Kuhn, who said that research scientists are motivated by the desire to solve new puzzles or to solve existing puzzles better than has been done before. However, puzzles do not motivate me. My motivation is that I am constantly unsatisfied with the current state of knowledge, and I don’t see why exams can’t be geared more closely to students like me who want to do more than just solve puzzles. Exams should be designed to encourage students to show what they can do. It’s a horrible feeling to come out of an exam knowing that you haven’t been allowed to prove to the examiner what you actually know.

Exams also affect the way students work. It is generally agreed that you learn better by working at an even pace throughout a course. However, most students would say from personal experience that you get better grades by studying intensively just before an exam. After all, exams are one-offs, so surely the best way to revise for them is in a single burst? If you have just one day to prove yourself, does it really matter what you did during the rest of the time?

There is another unfortunate side-effect of the fact that students only study to get good grades: I am sure we have all sat in a lecture thinking how nice it would be if the lecturer ran out of time to teach the whole syllabus. It would, after all, leave a lot less to learn. Students end up being more interested in knowing which topics they don’t need to study – instead of wanting to learn as much as they can.

The need for critical thinking

Most physics exams are designed to test our understanding of the subject. However, the most exciting parts of physics are those that we do not understand, and physics students tend not to be given the chance to discuss such topics during their courses. Students end up with no real idea of how to handle new or unfamiliar topics, and in an exam they tend to hide their cluelessness as best they can. This is wrong. We should be trained to be honest, admit our cluelessness and discuss problems on that basis.

I bet some older readers are thinking: “We had to go through the same exams as today’s students, but we learnt how to become critical thinkers.” That may be true, but nowadays many universities are little more than “student factories”, where the pressure is on academics to force as many students as possible through the system. Tutors simply no longer have the time to work closely with each student.

I have talked to professors who have told me about students who were mediocre as undergraduates but who flourished when they become postgraduates, because they finally got the chance to ask questions – and not just answer them. The transformations occurred because the students were at last allowed to show critical thinking.

The need for critical thinking also has wider implications. The current decline in the status of science in some areas of society may be because scientists are failing to respond to their critics and because “pseudo-science” is having far too big an influence on our society. If scientists are not taught critical thinking in university education, they may not only fail to use it in their work, but they will also lack the philosophical sophistication that is needed to respond to those who think science is a belief system that differs little from religion.

And indeed, why should science receive massive funding if it is not different from other belief systems? As the philosopher Theodore Schick, of Muhlenberg College in the US, said last year when addressing this problem: “Unless our educational system focuses more on teaching students how to think, rather than on what to think, our populace will become increasingly credulous. Scientists and educators alike need to realize that the educated person is not the person who can answer the questions, but the person who can question the answers.”

Answers, please

Some critics might argue that the impact of exams on individual students evens out in the long run. A student might be unlucky and under perform in one exam, but he or she might be lucky in the next exam, and the average grade is more or less right. However, returning to my analogy with experiments, this is nothing more than a random error. The real problem is that exams produce systematic errors, which occur long before the exams themselves. As I said, my concern is with the situation that students are forced into – not the evaluation itself.

Although I do not have clear solutions to the problems with exams, I believe that an important first step would be for physicists to recognize that the problems exist and to realize the urgency of solving them. We could then decide what actions to take. For example, we could survey current evaluation methods. Students and their tutors could then come together and try to work out ways of evaluating students without compromising the need for critical thinking. There must be something that is better than what we have today.

My feeling is that the solution lies in the direction of course work. Yes, there are problems with course work – in particular the fact that it can make it easier to cheat. However, if everything were closely scrutinized, cheating could be easily discovered. And if the evaluation were designed so that cheating gained you very little, then the incidences of cheating might actually fall.

I hope that my views have been sufficiently unpleasant for those who set exams and that the will to do something to change the situation has been stimulated. After all, if you were an examiner and if exams were experiments, would you dare to submit your exam data to a referee?

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