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KINDS OF EXAMINATIONS

By DANIEL HANNON, Department of Education, Chicago Normal College

S

EVERAL uses or purposes of examinations were discussed in the CHICAGO SCHOOLS JOURNAL last nonth. With the purposes pointed out, it night be well to take up next the various kinds of examinations now in use.

Probably the best known form of the xamination is what is sometimes called he essay or free-answer type. Questions ire prepared by the teacher on the subjectnatter studied for a month or term, and pupils write out their answers to the quesions in accordance with the knowledge hey have. Such questions often call only For information, but they sometimes require pupils to state cause and effect or other relationships, or to describe conditions, explain situations, etc.

The following questions are typical of the essay type of examination:

1. Give causes for the arid belt east of the Rocky Mountains.

2.

State reasons why Chicago became a great city.

3. Why has southern New England become a great industrial region?

4. What are leading products of the North Central States?

These questions are confined to the field of geography, but illustrate fairly well the nature of such questions.

In contrast with certain other forms of the examination to be discussed further on in this article, the essay type examination has certain features or qualities that may cause difficulty. In the questions given above, for example, the pupil would be required first to interpret the questions or try to find out what they mean. Next, he must recall and perhaps otherwise organize his information and then write it out in such a manner that the questions are answered in a way acceptable to the teacher. If time permits he ought to criticize his own effort and revise it. It will be noticed that several different kinds

of ability are called for. A child distinctly lacking in one of them may make a poor score in the examination.

Another feature that may cause difficulty in the essay type examination is that of giving credit to pupils' answers. Several important experiments have shown that teachers disagree seriously in giving credit marks on essay examination papers. Even in mathematics examinations, where there is less likely to be a difference of opinion as to the correct answers than in most subjects, this disagreement has been noted. Even the teacher who did the original scoring, on rescoring a set of such examination papers after laying them aside for several weeks, finds that she will not agree with her first estimate of scores.

Teachers who keep these two difficulties of the essay examination in mind may, by care in preparation of the questions, offset them to some extent. First, the questions may avoid vagueness of meaning by calling for definite points, even a definite number of points. Question I in the preceding list of questions might be made to read "Give three important causes for the arid belt east of the Rocky Mountains." Question 4 might be recast as "Give a list of eight (or more) leading products of the North Central States."

Secondly, teachers can improve scoring methods by writing out a set of answers to the questions before the examination is given. This procedure may reveal faulty questions and lead to revision, and it certainly should provide a fairly definite standard for scoring pupils' answers.

Several new forms of the written examination have made their appearance in the last few years and are becoming more or less familiar to a great many teachers. Their origin may be traced to the various group intelligence tests and standard tests in the different school subjects. These new examinations have names intended to be

descriptive of them. Probably the best known is the true-false or right-wrong test in which a number of statements prepared by the teacher are submitted for the pupils to mark. A few sample statements follow:

1. Magellan sailed west to reach the

east.

2.

Sir Walter Raleigh planted the first English colony in America.

3. The French Huguenots settled in the St. Lawrence River valley.

These three items serve to illustrate the examinations. The statements, of course, can be made for almost any school subject.

Another form of the new examination is the multiple choice type in which several statements about a fact are given, only one of which is correct. The test of the pupil's knowledge is in his selection of the correct statement. For example:

1. The thermometer is an instrument for showing

a. Air pressure.
b. Wind velocity.
c. Temperature.

d. Amount of moisture in the air.

2. Winds are caused by

a. Unequal heating of the earth's surface.

b. Storms.

c. Presence of moisture in the air.
d. Inequalities in the land surface.
e. The volume of the air above the
earth.

The correct answer to the first statement would be that the thermometer is an instrument for measuring temperature, and to the second that winds are caused by unequal heating of the earth's surface. The test feature is that the pupils must search among the list of statements to find and indicate the correct one.

Another test similar in form to the one just discussed is that known as the bestanswer choice form. The example below will illustrate this type:

The leading cause of the French and Indian war was

a. The hatred of the Indian allies of the French for the English settlers. b. The desire of the English for western, land.

c. The determination of the French to confine the English to the Atlantic seaboard.

d. The growing power and commercial importance of England.

e. The national rivalry of the English and French nations.

Probably the third in the list of answers given could be selected as the best answer to the question implied in the main statement. Since the other answers given might be selected, the test of the pupil here is selecting the best statement in the list.

The completion test, sometimes also called the mutilated sentence form, is another of the new-type examinations. Most teachers are familiar with a form of this test in which pupils fill in omitted words in a list of sentences. The following examples will illustrate the form: ..and........are necessary

I.

to the germination of seeds.

2. The following are four important uses of wood:

The test feature in the completion form is in the selection of terms to put in the blank spaces so that the whole is a correct statement. In the first form above, these terms would be "heat" and "moisture"; in the second, "fuel", "furniture making", "building", and "implement manufacture" would be acceptable answers.

Still another form of the new-type examination is that in which the pupil is asked to indicate which facts in two lists belong together. The two lists are arranged in parallel vertical columns convenient for the pupil to study. The lists below are given as an illustration of this form:

[blocks in formation]

3. 1913

State of Illinois inaugu-
rated paved road build-

4. 1917

5. 1919

ing.

spelling papers are now scored.

In the writer's opinion the following references are given in the order of value to Covenant of League of the classroom teacher unfamiliar with the Nations drawn up. more technical phases of the science of Wireless communication education: established.

The test of pupils' knowledge in this rm is his success in bringing each event to relationship with the year in which it ok place. While the example given is ncerned only with historical events and tes, the test form can easily be adapted many other subjects in the curriculum. ven number facts in arithmetic might be ranged in this form for an interesting

st.

One fact to be noticed about the new-
pe examination is the very definite
swers or responses that pupils are
make to the statements or questions.
xcept in the completion form writing re-
ired of pupils is limited to writing a
ngle word or letter or underscoring.
ven the completion form limits pupil
riting to a very few words. This feature
in marked contrast to the usual essay
pe examination where pupils are re-
aired to do considerable writing.
The scoring or marking of the two types
examinations stands out in contrast
so. The problem of scoring the essay
pe papers has been pointed out above.
he objective nature of the results of the
ew-type examinations is regarded as the
ost important advantage in their use.
If statements are carefully prepared so
at only one correct response is possible,
kamination papers can be rapidly and
asily scored by the pupils in the class, as

1. American History Teaching and Testing-Stormzand, Martin James. Macmillan Company, 1926. A manual for teachers. Excellent for seventh and eighth grades and high school.

2. Improvement of the Written Examination-Ruch, G. M. Scott, Foresman and Company, 1924. $1.80. Excellent, but somewhat technical.

3. Preparation and Use of New-Type Examinations. Paterson, Donald G. World Book Company, 1925. $0.45. A manual. Prepared for use of college teachers, but will be helpful to teachers in the grades and high school.

4. The Present Status of Written Examinations and Suggestions for Their Improvement-Bulletin No. 17, Bureau of Educational Research, College of Education, University of Illinois 1923. $0.50. Deals with examinations in high schools, but grade teachers will also get much help from it.

5. Written Examinations and Their Improvement-Bulletin No. 9, Bureau of Educational Research, College of Education, University of Illinois, 1922. $0.50. A critical treatment of the written examination.

6. The New Examination-Ballard, Philip Bosworth. London, Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd., 1924. $1.50. An untechnical discussion, but from the standpoint of an English educator.

THE N. E. A. AS A FORMATIVE FORCE

By FRANCIS G. BLAIR, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Illinois*

TH

HIS National Education Association should be the national laboratory where every question relating to the organization, administration, and instruction of the public school system should be subjected to the acid test, reduced to its elements, recast and reshaped to meet the changing economic and social needs. It should be the open forum for the freest and frankest discussion of every phase of our wide flung program of American education.

Thirty years ago I heard a series of lectures by a Hindu doctor on the theory of vibrations and concentration. According to this general theory the physical universe about us is the result of vibrations. God's creative thought took the form of vibrations. These were arrested at different rates. The lowest, crudest forms of matter represent vibratons made static at a very low rate of vibration. Man's thought represents the highest rate. All the range between the loose earth and the vibrant mind of man represents in this philosophy different rates of vibration. Under the name of concentration this Hindu doctor brought forward the idea that as God through His thought created the objective world, He could, by rethinking, change any of its forms, and as man's mind was just a little lower than that of the creative mind, he could, through the power of concentration, change the forms of matter. She cited a number of instances where Hindu doctors, highly trained in the power of concentration, had been able to change a baser metal like silver into a finer metal like gold. As these lectures were given about the time that the "Great Commoner" was trying by legislative enactment in America to raise sixteen dollars in silver to the value of one dollar in gold, this particular point had a peculiar in

terest.

Whatever may be our reaction to this Hindu philosophy, we are pretty gener

ally agreed that the earth was once in a nebulous, gaseous condition; that through eons of time, by cooling and condensation. a crust was formed. Then began the grea: cosmic battle between the forces of stratification and eruption. That battle is on today. The great interior forces of the earth. are overlaid by the weight of stratified rock and earth. On or above this stratifying crust rest the seas and the atmosphere. The eruptive forces from within and the forces of wind and water from above are constantly at work, wearing, changing breaking down the stratification and reshaping into new forms, most of the time gently, but occasionally with great violence.

This same sort of conflict between the stratifying and reshaping forces is on in every human situation. Governments evolved through a great burst of patriotic emotion and idealisms soon stratify into forms of constitutions and laws and cus toms. Quietly and gently, through edu cation and due processes of law, slight modifications are made. But sometime the eruptive force of a revolution is re quired to break up and recast these strati fying elements into new forms. Is not the same thing true of all religions?

Certainly, no one can doubt that these contending forces are at work in all tems of education. Our educational fore fathers, with wonderful foresight, with exceptional constructive imagination, co ceived and launched our system of public education. In its very nature, education is a process of rethinking all experience of the past and reshaping it to meet present and future needs. It should always be a process of becoming. Of necessity in the several states, the school systems were initiated through constitutional and stat utory provisions. School boards were given the power to make rules and regu *Delivered before the N. E. A. at Indianap July, 1925.

ations. The conservatism of the human nind, the weight of tradition, the hand of he dead past, all joined to repress, overlay and confine the free, active thought and pirit of education. All progress is conlitioned upon those forces which resist his stratifying tendency, which tend to reak up and reshape these constitutions and laws and rules insofar as they are ound to incrust and obstruct the free deelopment of our state systems of public

nstruction.

One of the functions of this National Education Association is to give vent to these eruptive, reconstructive forces. Here we bring combined, concentrated thought of the leaders of American education to bear upon these lower lifeless forms to raise them to higher and more effective media for educational expression, to break up the stratification into the original plastic elements; in brief, to reduce the educational earth and rocks back to the nebulous and gaseous condition. Some of the enemies of this Association who are disposed to think that it is too nebulous and too gaseous, misunderstand its main purpose. Here the systems of public education are in the puddling pot. Here they are in the state of flux and flow. Out in the districts where something must be done every hour in the day, respect for tradition, for the past, for established rule and method, must obtain. Here we can give ourselves over to the wreckless pastime of educational gods tearing down and rebuilding the educational worlds.

This stratifying tendency is seen clearly in the subjects of instruction. How often through the ages has the human mind allowed itself to be incrusted and overlaid by the strata of conventional forms of subject-matter and programs of study? How valiantly, though often unsuccessfully, the eruptive, transforming forces have struggled to shake from the living body of education this dead body of meaningless form? Here is this Association-through committee work and department investigation, through debate and discussion

curriculums, courses of study, subjects of instruction, are under constant review and analysis, are constantly being reshaped and recast to meet the changing social and economical demands. In addition to the stratifying influence of fixing by law the specific subjects which shall be taught, we are now faced with a proposal to prohibit by law the teaching of certain subjects; a proposal which may close the door to free and open investigation of the truth, and padlock that door with a statute. This Association must resist with all its power this attempt to put an iron band around the growing tree of education.

In the life of every teacher there must be a constant struggle against these forces of stratification. I am one who believes that there is much of value in the past. I believe that every good idea, every good emotion, every worth-while thought of the past is just as living and vital today as it was at the time it was felt or conceived, unless that idea has become incrusted or overlaid by some sort of stratification which robs it of its life and vitality. This eruptive, reconstructive process within the individual, within the institution, is not a mere protest against the past. It certainly is not an avowal of a loss of faith in what has gone before. It is simply the struggle of the human soul to have life, and that more abundantly. Every teacher, within her classroom, in her community, with her daily round of duty, is constantly in danger of lowering the rate of her professional vibration and suffering stratification and consequent limitation of power and progress. Every influence that helps the teacher to keep her windows open towards the stars, to keep her ideas and ideals in the process of becoming, helps to create and maintain a living, growing educational opportunity for the youth of the Republic. This Association, whose membership represents teachers, research workers, thinkers, philosophers in every field of public education, furnishes the greatest of all workshops for reshaping,

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