Annotated Bibliography for Inquiry II

Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022

Gernsbacher, M. A., Soicher, R. N., & Becker-Blease, K. A. (2020). Four empirically based reasons not to administer time-limited tests. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 6(2), 175-190. 

This article explored reasons for favoring non-timed tests over timed test: validity, reliability, inclusivity, and equity.  The article reinforced my previous empirical finding from conversations with teachers and students, that giving students with dyslexia more time is the most prescribed accommodation. This article is of interest to me because it challenged my previous conceptions about allowing more time as an accommodation; it suggested that because extra-time may benefit all students this accommodation for learning diverse students may be unequitable; and because of this the authors strongly advocate that tests be untimed for all students. The authors reiterated common historical misconception of corelating ability with speed and offered much research contradicting this belief in many subject areas and education levels. The authors also cite research indicating that although a commonly used and accepted accommodation, most students given this accommodation do not utilize it significantly; in essence the authors suggest that the advantage in untimed tests is the absence of the “pressure of time ticking off” and associated anxiety. 

Monday, Jan. 10, 2022

Note: I chose to include both article because the first used many references to the second, and I wanted to read the original source. The article in The Dyslexic Advantage views the Beals and Garelick (2015) article through the lens of students with dyslexia, rather than the original article's more general viewpoint.

Dyslexia Advantage Team. (2020). Don't let working memory prevent math learning. https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/dont-let-working-memory-prevent-math-learning/

This article talks about how working memory can affect a student’s math performance but not their inherent mathematical ability, and accommodations should be considered to offset this disadvantage. The paper specifically addresses the practice of asking students to explain their thought processes in math problems, which they believe may be particularly challenging to students with poor working memory. They also suggest that there is a significant benefit in streamlining a question into its basic mathematical representation for students who have dyslexia, as this puts less emphasis on working memory and tests mathematical ability. This is interesting to me because it's not something that I've considered before in potential accommodations or adaptions for students with dyslexia. I am aware of the potential disadvantages of word problems in terms of the extra required reading but had not considered their requirement of working memory, nor had I thought about asking students to explain their thinking. Personally, explaining thinking always caused anxiety for me, as it seemed something beyond my current state of thinking and felt like it was asking something quite separate from the mathematical problem itself.

Beals, K. & Garelick, B. (2015). Explaining Your Math: Unnecessary at Best, Encumbering at Worst. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/math-showing-work/414924/

This article by Katherine Beals and Barry Garelick (2015) is the cornerstone of the previous article in The Dyslexic Advantage. The authors question the equity in requiring students to explain their mathematical reasoning process, and whether their ability to provide a correct answer should not be proof enough of their understanding. The authors reason that there can many reasons, other than mathematical ability, that challenge, or prevent, a student from being able to eloquently explain their thought process. This article gave me a fresh insight into potential disadvantages our teaching and assessment methods may present to students with dyslexia and other learning differences or needs.