Adult Learning and High-Stakes Testing: Strategies for Success.

In this world of increasing competition for jobs and accountability in the workplace, adults are facing many new pressures, one of which is passing tests as part of the application process. This is especially difficult for adults who are academically challenged or did not go far enough with their education to feel comfortable in testing situations. In effect, they are sharing the same pressures their children face in schools when they must take and pass tests each year to be promoted. High-stakes testing is a real concern for these individuals. Teachers in public schools work hard to prepare their students to master content quickly, focus on test-taking skills and provide strategies to help them cope with the stress that accompanies the process. Adult educators should do the same for their students in similar situations. High-Stakes Testing For the last eight years, I have been working with groups of adults who are routinely subjected to high-stakes testing. They are interested in becoming teachers and are currently working as teacher assistants, bus drivers, and in other similar, non-professional positions. Our state requires that these individuals who want to be admitted to teacher education programs take and pass the Reading, Writing, and Mathematics tests of the Praxis Series. While the content addressed on the tests is considered basic and the skills needed to pass the test are not too advanced, they present obstacles for many potential teacher candidates who find them daunting. Almost 80% of the test-takers in my seminars are female, range in age from 35 to 50, have completed high school, and have taken a few courses toward a degree. But they cannot go further in the college program until they pass all three tests. They are highly motivated and energetic. Many are responsible for children at home and take care of aging parents in addition to holding down frill-time jobs. They are culturally diverse: African-American (55%), Caucasian (35%) and other minorities, such as Hispanic and Native American (10%). Many have tried and failed to pass the tests multiple times. When I meet with them, they are often frustrated and are convinced that they will never succeed. My task is to help them to succeed. Strategies That Work for Most Academically-Challenged Adults As adult educators, we all know that there are certain fundamental practices that are effective in helping adults learn. These reflect what we know about the basic principles of andragogy, described by Knowles, Holton, and Swanson (2005), memory and how adults learn from experts who study the brain, such as Sylwester (1995), and how to enhance academic motivation, from such authorities as Wlodkowski (1999), to name only a few Ideally, it would be wonderful to be able to apply these practices exactly as they should be implemented in every learning situation. The biggest hindrance to doing so in this case is the lack of time to cover a lot of content and enhance test-taking skills. Because of the format of the sessions, I have only one day to prepare participants for each test. In effect, I must teach and re-teach basic concepts that they haven't been exposed to in decades and help them negotiate and become more comfortable with the testing process as well. To make this task more difficult, many participants admit that they were not particularly successful in the areas of reading, writing, and mathematics when they were students years ago. Therefore, I am challenged to combine the principles of best practice with what will be the most efficient approach to meeting the goals of the session. The learning situation must be structured in a way that will enable them to learn as much as possible and as quickly as possible. For these academically-challenged adults in this high-stakes testing situation, I found the following basic guidelines to be very effective: 1. Teach in small groups (4-6 participants, if possible) when individual tutorials are not available. …