In the modern world, different tests in the various classrooms that students are in are a standard way of gauging their understanding in a classroom perspective. Different advocacies of education have preferred standardized tests to those that vary according to the students' knowledge. Standardized tests, among other advantages, majorly ensure that the students are tested on a common platform that displays their grasping capabilities in the class. Summatively, standardized tests enhance fair competition among the students in a given classroom scenario. The fair competition ensures that the involved students perform better at the end of the academic duration. Standardized testing is particularly frequent in the United States of America and was developed since the 19th century. The standardized tests are in both private and public schools. In the schools, the administration of the standardized tests is often a reliable method of measuring the achievements among the students in a given classroom (Vittana, 2017).
Nonetheless, the standardized tests, for instance in the United States of America, have been associated with several demerits that may reduce their effectiveness in the education system. One of the disadvantages of standardized tests is that they can be predictable at times. That reduces the students' ability to prepare adequately for the tests which means that they are more likely to fail in the standardized tests than the other tests in their academic quest. The standardized tests are based on the assumption that all the students are sitting the examination start from the same point of knowledge. That is not applicable to students who join the others while studies are going on. There is an uneven distribution of time spent in the standardized tests. More time is spent on preparing for the examinations while less time is taken in the actual examinations handling. Lastly, the test results of the standardized tests are not a representative of the students' total academic ability (Vittana, 2017).
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Statement of the problem
According to the education curricula of different countries across the globe such as the United States of America, there has been advocacy for the use of the standardized tests. That has majorly been used in coming up with the advantages such as gauging the students based on the same platform and reduce the inconveniences of the difficulty of papers to some students and simplicity in the others. Also, the standardized tests have targeted coming up with reliability in assessing the academic abilities of the students over a specific period. There exists a gap that is created by the inability of the tests to cover the entire students' academic pursuance efficiently.
However, the efforts of the educators in taking the standard tests advantageous have been hampered by the examinations' inability to represent the overall students' ability in their total academic duration. The educators in the United States of America have attempted to revert the situation by trying to come up with standardized tests that can represent the whole academic life of the students to gauge them adequately. Nevertheless, their conjunctive efforts have primarily proved futile under the current educational curricula available (Erickson, 2012).
In spite of the current standardized tests being unable to show the students entire academic ability, there is light at the end of the tunnel for the educators at different levels of their academic life. The educators may have the ability to change the tests to improve their ability to cover the entire students' academic life and accurately gauging their ability in the academic sector. For instance, the curriculum in the countries can provide more consistency and continuity in the assessment via the standardized tests. Extensive efforts of teacher evaluation in the United States of America can also be used to ensure that the standardized tests are an indicator of the students' actual academic ability. The best way to achieve this is to link the educators' evaluation with the goals of students' improvement. That is to say that they will be more careful on the overall students' ability in the classroom scenarios.
Should the missing efforts in enhancing the broader scope of the standardized tests in the students' academic ability persist, it will prove difficult to ensure that the results of the standard examinations are essential in gauging the examinees' ability. There is need to research on why the current educational systems are unable to efficiently enhance the scoping of the entire students' ability in the classrooms in which they are. The research may also encompass finding out how the standardized tests may be customized to fit the students' need for the examinations covering what they have been taught. Otherwise, a significant portion of their academic life may not be included in the standardized tests that may be administered to them.
Purpose of the research
The primary goal of the study is to focus on the factors that lead to the lack of the ability of the standardized tests to efficiently cover the representation of the total academic capacity of the students. The purpose of the research is closely related to the goals of the conduction of the study. Erickson (2012) has likened the challenges facing the American education system, and most specifically the public schools in the country, to a monster that has devoured the American education system. The situation has reached the national conversation in the United States of America in an attempt to address the scenario of the standardized tests and their inability to cover the entire academic duration of the students.
The other essence of the research is to identify the educational models being used in the current curricula around the world and how they have been ineffective in addressing the educators and the students' expectations on the standardized tests. Various schools in America have been faced with low levels of technology which has further hardened situations in the state-of-the-art education in the country. Most of the public schools, according to Erickson (2012), have failed in the attempts to ensure that the educational system has been bettered by the standard examinations that the students have sat continuously. That is to say that the educational models being used in the distinct countries in the world are not best suited to realize the advantageousness of the standardized tests to both the students and the teachers alike.
The other importance of the research is to find out the reasons underlying the inability of the standardized tests to cover the academic life of the students in the different parts of the world. In the United States of America, for example, the No Child Left Behind act developed in 2001 was supposed to ensure that every child in the country can access education to avoid being left behind. That was to provide that even if the standard examinations were in place, the students would have started on the same point to enhance their ability to cover the entire students' academic life (Erickson, 2012).
The other necessity of the research is to investigate whether the standardized tests can be capable of representing the students' total academic ability. In the United States of America, the No Child Left Behind act in 2001 under the bipartisan treaty concept has not been effective in improving the learning potentials among the children that come from the low-income families. In the country today, the tests have become the cornerstone of education, and there has not been a better way to prove that the students have been learning apart from through the various examinations they have had to sit (Erickson, 2012).
Research question(s) to address the purpose of the research
The research questions given have been used to address the necessity of the study. The issues will also be used to determine the research design of the paper. The questions used in the research will contain the purpose of the study, the variables in the study and the population involved in the study. The following are the research questions used to address the study.
Does the use of standardized questions in the examinations of the United States of America's education system fulfill the students and the educators' desire in the educational, academic field?
The effectiveness of the standard examinations administered to the students in the various levels in the United States of America depends on some factors. What factors could be underlying the efficiency of the standardized tests?
What would be considered as the most significant impediment to the efficiency of the standard examinations administered to the students at various education levels?
Do standard tests in the United States of America and the other countries cover the entire academic life of the students who sit for the examinations?
How well do the standard tests designed by the different educational curricula in the world cover the assessment of the students' knowledge base as observed in the classroom situations?
How extensive is the use of the standardized exams in the various countries in the world in representing the students' wholesome academic ability?
What would be the difference between standardized tests and the non-standardized in their effectiveness in covering the entire students' academic life in their level of study?
In the modern world, examinations have become part of the livelihood of people on the different fields of life, even in the professional life. How convenient is the examination setup for the students in determining their understanding capabilities and knowledge?
Related hypotheses (null and alternative)
For completion, the research has to have both the null and the alternative suggestions. The null hypothesis represents the researchers' prediction that does not affect the results of the study while the alternative hypothesis affects the results of the proposed research (Surbhi, 2018). The null hypothesis in the research, in this case, is that the test results of standardized tests are not a representative of the students' total academic ability. Different researchers within and without the borders of the united states of America have negated the idea of the standard examinations among the students in the different levels of academics in the distinct countries in the world being a representative of their whole academic life.
The alternative hypothesis in the current study is stated as the standard examinations in the various countries in the world can represent the whole academic life of the students. Researchers around the globe have worked round the clock to find out the advantages of the standardized examinations. They have also tried to link them to the exams' ability to traverse across the holistic students' academic life and maintain the effectiveness of the standardization of examinations within and without the United States of America (Vittana, 2017). Despite the arguments that standardization has bred a culture of low performance in the schools, it is possible to revert the situation before it is too late.
Research method and corresponding design with a rationale for a method and design choice
The research method to be used in the research will be a mixture of both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The qualitative research method used in the study will be interviewed. Interviews will be conducted on the students, the educators, and the educational curricula developers in the various counties of the world. The quantitative research method to be used in the research will be the standardized test results in the students in the United States of America. On the other hand, the other countries that lack the standardized examination system include Finland, England and Japan (Turner, 2014). The combination of the qualitative and quantitative analysis will bring about the use of experimental design in the research.
The experimental design makes use of the grouping of the participants based on particular features that may enhance the effectiveness of the study. The randomized block design will be employed to secern the students according to their ages and levels of schooling. Then the homogeneous groups of the participants will be divided into random groups within their similar groupings. The variables that can discombobulate the experimental design will be minimized to avoid confusion in the research to be conducted on the standardized tests. Besides, the experimental design will help the study associate both dependent and independent variables for ease of analysis. The reduction of variables also ensures that there is a clear difference between the populations in the study (Statistics How To, 2018).
Additionally, the experimental design has various advantages that will benefit the study as a whole. The first merit of experimental design is that the researchers will have a high level of control in the study. Experimental design is based on the researcher's ability to isolate the particular variables in the research. The high level of power in the design of experiments will be advantageous due to the accuracy of the results of the study. Secondly, the experimental design is diverse and can be used in some research scenarios. Its diversity in the application leads to its flexibility in the collection and analysis of the data (Vittana, 2017).
Experimental research has specific inferences. Based on the ability of the designs of experiments to come up with precise results, conclusions can be made quickly and also make it easy for reference purposes in the future. The findings in the experimental design are consistent. It is also possible for experimental models to be regular in the inferences made. That makes it possible to understand the success or failure of a research problem such as the one regarding standardized tests. The results of the design of experiments can also be duplicated. The research will be straightforward even when others will control the variables. Everyone will have the ability to check the published results of a study that has been conducted. Experimental research can also be combined with the other methods of analysis. In the case of the study to be undertaken, the experimental design will incorporate both the qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection (Vittana, 2017).
The research design used in the research will be a fixed design. The kind of fixed design to be used will be the experimental research design. The experimental research design will enable the researchers to control the situation at hand. Due to the ability of the researchers to actively monitor the case in the inability of the standardized tests, the outcomes of the research will not be fixed and can thus be changed at any time during the study. The researchers will randomly assign the respondents to distinct conditions and measure the variables that are focused. Through that, the researchers will have the ability to control the effect of the secernate variables that may confuse them in the analysis. As a result, the experimental design is conventionally fixed even before the collection of data commences.
Description of the sample participants and data collection and analysis strategies
The sample participants of the study will be the students in the various countries of the world. The educators of the students will also be encompassed in the research. Lastly, the organizers of the curriculum in the countries will also be included. The eligibility for the research will be as follows. The participants of the study have to be in levels of education below the university education. The participants have to be from the United States of America. That is because the research will have to be based in countries practicing the standardized examination system. The participants for the controlled research will come from countries such as South Korea, Japan, Northern Ireland, Taiwan or Singapore (Khazan, 2012). Summatively, the respondents of the study have to have informed consent. Informed consent has to come from students who will be aged 15 and above. Those underage, as in 15 years of age or below, will have their parents or guardians consent on their behalf.
Data will be collected using the experimental methods of data collection. Qualitative methods of data collection used will be the interview. The interview questions will be administered to the selected participants who will have qualified for the research and will have consented to take part in the study. The research team will be involved in acquiring the necessary permissions from the authorities in the different countries that will be the target of the research. The research team will be divided into groups to different countries in the research target. The quantitative data collection method will be based on the standardized test scores collected from the students in the United States of America. The non-standardized examination scores will be analyzed to act as a comparison to the normalized results. The non-standardized result tests will serve as the control experiment to identify whether the test results of the standardized nature will represent the students total academic ability or not.
The percentages of the results in the standardized tests in the United States of America will be analyzed alongside those not the non-standardized results from students in the other countries. The average score of the American students will be prepared for the different levels of study. The same case will be done to the other countries acting as the control experiment in the research. The modal score will also be instrumental in comparing the two scenarios to one another. The distribution of the scores will be essential to establish the gap between the students who may be considered to have a high level of knowledge and those found to have a lower level of understanding.
The method of data analysis in the study will be the independent sample t-test analysis. The data sets, in this case, are the countries whose students sit for the standardized exams and those who sit for non-standardized exams. That is to mean that the data sets have a difference. The independent sample t-test will be used to establish if there exists a difference between the data sets in the statistical approach. Therefore, the t-test method used will ensure there is a clear difference between the data sets to compare the results of the study. The analysis method will offer simplicity in the interpretation of the data collected. Additionally, the independent sample t-test leads to the ease of calculation of the received data (Flom, 2018).
Ethical considerations for the proper treatment of the participants
The first most fundamental ethical considerations for the participants us that their information will be treated confidentially. Their names and other personal information such as contact details and their locations or residences will not be published while the analysis of the research is being conducted. The assurance of confidentiality in research ensures that the respondents of the study give accurate information that contributes to efficient research. Secrecy in research may also address the possibility of the respondents feeling embarrassed about the kind of information that they gave out. Confidentiality also discusses the potential of the participant’s fears punishment from the society due to participation in the research (Explorable, 2018). For example, children may fear punishment from their parents for participating in a study.
The other ethical consideration in the research is informed consent. The participants have to be provided with the information regarding a study adequately so that by the time they decide to join the investigation, they already know what is to be done in the research. Just like confidentiality in research, informed consent contributes to honesty in the information given to the researchers by the respondents of a particular study. The informed consent in research also guarantees the participants that the investigators will be liable for the security of the data they give. Lastly, informed consent enhances ethical behavior throughout the study (Parvizi, Chakravarty, Og, & Rodriguez-Paez, 2008).
The other ethical consideration is avoidance of harm to the participants during the study. Naturally, participants would like to take part in research that their security is guaranteed and they are sure that no harm can befall them throughout the study. The research team must ensure that the protection of the respondents is upheld to encourage them to participate in another research. The avoidance of harm in analysis can also be referred to as beneficence (Wallace & Sheldon, 2014). The benefits of research have to outweigh the risks of participation in the study for it to avoid harming the participants (Martela & Ryan, 2015).
The last ethical consideration in the research is ensuring the quality of the study. The quality of research encompasses some factors influencing the success of the survey conducted. The main item of quality is integrity. Integrity in research may be taken to indicate the honesty upheld in that research (Kang, 2016). Honesty is integral in modern studies. Reliability is required from both the participants and the researchers in a research perspective. Studies across the world have shown that honest people tend to be more rational than the dishonest people, and especially in making decisions (Filiz & Battaglio Jr, 2017).
References
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