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"Question: Very often, students will think they understand a body of material. Believing that they know it, they stop trying to learn more. But, come test time, it turns out they really don't know the material. Can cognitive science tell us anything about why students are commonly mistaken about what they know and don't know? Are there any strategies teachers can use to help students better estimate what they know?
Answer: There are multiple cues by which each of us assess what we know and don't know. But these cues are fallible, which explains why students sometimes think that they know material better than their classroom performance indicates."
This in-depth post looks at research in the area of cognitive science and shares findings that are applicable to the classroom. It turns out that research shows that two cues are critical (quoted from post):
* our "familiarity" with a given body of information
* our "partial access" to that information
What this means is that students may believe they know the material because they have seen it before. The key here is to remember that there is a difference between "familiarity and recollection."
Partial access "refers to the knowledge that an individual has of either a component of the target material or information closely related to the target material."
The post goes on to explore why students end up woth these two cues. Three ways that students "reach this unfortunate situation" are shared:
* Rereading
* Shallow processing
* Recollecting related information
For a more in-depth discussion on this click through to the post.