Do examinations prepare students for higher education? A lesson from the Covid-19 lockdown

Jones, Harriet L., Zini, Valentina, Green, Jon R., Prendergast, John R. and Scott, Jon (2023) Do examinations prepare students for higher education? A lesson from the Covid-19 lockdown. Journal of Biological Education, 57 (4). pp. 709-714. ISSN 0021-9266

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic caused severe disruption to education in the UK in 2020, with most of the school teaching moving online and national school examinations being cancelled. This was particularly disruptive for those taking end of school examinations in preparation for higher education. Biological science courses require students to absorb a lot of new vocabulary and concepts, with examinations traditionally focusing on content recall rather than reasoning. Students who had entered university in September 2019 were compared with those arriving in September 2020 with respect to their knowledge of bioscience vocabulary and understanding of key concepts. Results showed no significant difference between those who had gone through the examination process in 2019 relative to those who had not, in 2020. This suggests the cramming of information for examinations has no detectable effect on the knowledge and understanding of biology that students take with them to university.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: pre-university,covid,examinations,preparedness,transition,vocabulary,education,agricultural and biological sciences(all) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3304
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
Related URLs:
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 16 Oct 2021 00:53
Last Modified: 29 Aug 2023 09:30
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/81744
DOI: 10.1080/00219266.2021.1941190

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