Using Standards to Improve Middle School Students' Accuracy atEvaluating the Quality of Their Recall

摘要

When recalling key term definitions from class materials, students may recall entirely incorrect defini-tions, yet will often claim that these commission errors are entirely correct; that is, they are overconfidentin the quality of their recall responses. We investigated whether this overconfidence could be reduced byproviding various standards to middle school students as they evaluated their recall responses. Studentsstudied key term definitions, attempted to recall each one, and then were asked to score the quality oftheir recall. In Experiment 1, they evaluated their recall responses by rating each response as fully correct,partially correct, or incorrect. Most important, as they evaluated a particular response, it was presentedeither alone (i.e., without a standard) or with the correct definition present. Providing this full-definitionstandard reduced overconfidence in commission errors: Students assigned full or partial credit to 73% oftheir commission errors when they received no standard, whereas they assigned credit to only 44% ofthese errors when receiving the full-definition standard. In Experiment 2, a new standard was introduced:Idea units from each definition were presented, and students indicated whether each idea unit was in theirresponse. After making these idea-unit judgments, the students then evaluated the quality of their entireresponse. Idea-unit standards further reduced overconfidence. Thus, although middle school students areoverconfident in evaluating the quality of their recall responses, using standards substantially reduces thisoverconfidence and promises to improve the efficacy of their self-regulated learning.