Student Attitudes and Approaches to Learning in a Science Classroom

Students’ attitudes and perceptions may influence their test preparation strategies. The type of assessment may also affect the preparation protocol. The goal of this action research study was to examine the attitudes of students as they prepared to take an assessment and explore the relationship between student attitudes and their preparation for specific types of assessments. Multiple choice and essay examinations were chosen as the assessments for this study. The findings of the study indicate that students preferred multiple choice examinations. The findings also indicate that the students utilized an overall surface approach to learning in preparation for the assessments. However, students also indicated that they believed the essay examination was the more accurate of the two assessments and that grades on the assessments were more important than knowledge of the science content.