- Title: School students’ confidence when answering diagnostic questions online
- Authors: Foster, Woodhead, Barton, Clark-Wilson
- Access the original paper here
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Paper summary
This research paper analyzes a large dataset of UK school students’ responses to online mathematics diagnostic questions. The study examines the correlation between student confidence and accuracy, exploring the influence of gender, age, and socioeconomic status. A key finding is the confirmation of the hypercorrection effect, where highly confident incorrect answers are more likely to be corrected later. The research uses statistical methods like regression analysis to analyze the data and provides insights into improving mathematics education. The study’s findings have implications for classroom practices and the design of educational tools. The data is publicly available.
What are the key implications for teachers in the classroom?
- Teachers should incorporate confidence assessment into their teaching practices. The sources suggest that students’ confidence in their mathematical abilities is an important factor in their learning. Students who are confident in their abilities are more likely to be successful in mathematics. One way to help students develop confidence is to use confidence assessment. This involves asking students to rate their confidence in their answers to mathematics questions. This can help students to become more aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and to identify areas where they need to improve.
- Teachers should be aware of the hypercorrection effect and encourage students to make mistakes. The hypercorrection effect is the observation that errors made with high confidence are more easily corrected than those made with low confidence. This suggests that it may be beneficial for teachers to allow students to make mistakes in low-stakes assessments, as this can provide opportunities for students to learn from their errors. When students make errors with high confidence, they are more likely to be surprised by their mistakes and to pay more attention to the correct answer, which can lead to better learning.
- Teachers should be aware of the gender gap in mathematics confidence and take steps to address it. The sources indicate that, in general, girls show lower confidence in mathematics than boys, even when girls obtain higher mathematics grades than boys. Societal stereotypes about gendered roles may contribute to girls’ lower confidence in mathematics. Teachers can help to address this gender gap by providing girls with more opportunities to succeed in mathematics, by challenging gender stereotypes in the classroom, and by encouraging girls to believe in their mathematical abilities.
- Teachers should be aware of the decline in mathematics confidence that often occurs as students progress through school and take steps to prevent it. The sources show that students’ confidence in mathematics tends to decline as they get older. This decline may be due to several factors, such as the increasing difficulty of the mathematics that students are learning, or to students’ developing metacognition and self-representation, as they become more conscious of any difficulties and limitations. Teachers can help to prevent this decline in confidence by providing students with a supportive learning environment, by helping students to develop a growth mindset, and by teaching students strategies for coping with challenges.
- Teachers should be aware that socioeconomically disadvantaged students may have lower confidence in mathematics than their more advantaged peers, even when they have the same level of attainment. The sources suggest that socioeconomically disadvantaged students may have lower confidence in mathematics than their more advantaged peers, even when they have the same level of attainment. This may be due to several factors, such as students’ experiences outside of school, or to the ways in which schools are structured. Teachers can help to address this issue by providing socioeconomically disadvantaged students with extra support, by creating a classroom culture that values diversity and inclusion, and by working to ensure that all students have access to high-quality mathematics instruction.
The sources suggest that confidence assessment can be a valuable tool for teachers. By incorporating confidence assessment into their teaching practices, teachers can help students to develop confidence in their mathematical abilities, to learn from their mistakes, and to become more successful in mathematics.
Quote
An important benefit of incorporating confidence assessment into diagnostic questions may be to prompt students to reflect on their confidence level when incorrect and so take advantage of the hypercorrection effect
