Reducing Test Anxiety and Improving Test Performance in America's

372 Pages·2007·4.12 MB·English

by  Raymond Trevor Bradley

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educing esT nxieTy
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and mPRoving
T P
esT eRfoRmance
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in meRica s chools
Results from the
TestEdge®
National Demonstration Study
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Conducted by the
Copyright © 2007 Institute of HeartMath
All rights reserved. No part of this report may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from
the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by:
Institute of HeartMath
14700 West Park Avenue, Boulder Creek, California 95006
831-338-8500
[email protected]
www.heartmath.org
Cover design and layout by Sandy Royall
Citation information:
Bradley, R. T., McCraty, R., Atkinson, M., Arguelles. L., Rees, R. A., & Tomasino, D.
(2007). Reducing Test Anxiety and Improving Test Performance in America’s Schools:
Results from the TestEdge National Demonstration Study. Boulder Creek, CA: Heart-
Math Research Center, Institute of HeartMath, Report No. 07-04-01.
Address for correspondence:
Rollin McCraty, Ph.D., Director of Research
HeartMath Research Center
Institute of HeartMath
14700 West Park Avenue
Boulder Creek, California, 95006
Ph. [phone], Fax: [phone], Email: [email protected]
Note:
Freeze-Frame, HeartMath, Heart Lock-In, and The Resilient Educator are registered
trademarks of the Institute of HeartMath. TestEdge is a registered trademark of Heart-
Math LLC. Freeze-Framer and emWave are registered trademarks of Quantum Intech,
Inc. Attitude Breathing is a registered trademark of Doc Childre.
ii Reducing TesT anxieTy and imPRoving TesT PeRfoRmance in ameRica’s schools
Recent advances in neuroscience are highlighting connec-
tions between emotion, social functioning, and decision
making that have the potential to revolutionize our under-
standing of the role of affect in education. In particular, the
neurobiological evidence suggests that the aspects of cogni-
tion that we recruit most heavily in schools, namely learning,
attention, memory, decision making, and social functioning,
are both profoundly affected by and subsumed within the
processes of emotion … .
—Mary Helen Immordino-Yang & Antonio Damasio
“We Feel, Therefore We Learn: The Relevance of Affective and Social
Neuroscience to Education.” Mind, Brain, and Education, 2007, 1(1): 3.
© Copyright 2007 Institute of HeartMath iii
iv Reducing TesT anxieTy and imPRoving TesT PeRfoRmance in ameRica’s schools
Endorsements
“I was thrilled to read HeartMath’s comprehensive report on the results of the TestEdge
National Demonstration Study. The study is superb, utilizing an experimental design in
which data were gathered from a rich combination of questionnaires, interviews, obser-
vations, student drawings, and physiological recordings. All of the steps of the study are
adequately controlled and the rigorous multivariate statistical procedures are highly effec-
tive. The study yielded an impressive body of cross-corroborating evidence documenting
the effectiveness of the TestEdge program in reducing student test anxiety and improving
test performance. The study is an exemplar of how social science experiments in open field
research settings ought to be done.
From my vantage point, obtaining objective physiological recordings of heart rhythm ac-
tivity from students not only is a significant achievement in its own right, but also adds a
new scale of validation to the study’s major findings and enhances the value of the study
well beyond its immediate application. Of particular import is the physiological evidence
indicating that students in the program had established a new set point of emotional stabil-
ity—a requisite for sustained behavioral change.”
—Karl H. Pribram, m.D., PH.D. (Hon. multi.)
Neuropsychologist; Author – Brain and Perception and Languages of the Brain;
Professor Emeritus, Stanford University; Distinguished Research Professor,
Georgetown University
“The detailed information presented in this report describes the Institute of HeartMath’s
comprehensive study on reducing stress and test anxiety and improving students’ academ-
ic performance and emotional well-being ... . The findings of this study provide impressive
evidence that students who were trained to use the HeartMath TestEdge program showed
significant reductions in test anxiety and corresponding improvement in their scores on
standard measures of academic performance. I was impressed with the careful statistical
analyses of the data, and was especially pleased to note the large alpha coefficients for the
Total, Worry and Emotionality scores of the Test Anxiety Inventory, and that the scores on
these measures were substantially reduced by the TestEdge intervention. While it is unfor-
tunate that the demographic characteristics of the students in the experimental and control
schools were somewhat different, the statistical procedures for minimizing the influence
of these differences were very effective. Overall, the studies conducted by the Institute of
HeartMath provide impressive evidence that the TestEdge program is an effective interven-
tion for reducing test anxiety and facilitating academic performance.”
—CHarles D. sPielberger, PH.D., abPP
Psychologist; Author – Understanding Stress and Anxiety, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory,
and Test Anxiety Inventory; Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology and Director,
Center for Research in Behavioral Medicine and Health Psychology,
University of South Florida
© Copyright 2007 Institute of HeartMath v
Endorsements
“As an author primarily concerned with the development of intelligence in children, whose
eight books on that general theme have been published and translated into many languag-
es, … I predict that within a decade nothing less than a true revolution in child develop-
ment, rearing, and education will be brought about by HeartMath’s TestEdge research.
Of all the HeartMath reports, this one holds the greatest promise. It is a goldmine of infor-
mation, research, and insight ... . That the biological basis for learning lies in the emotional
structures of brain and heart, not in intellectual schema and enforced modifications of
behavior, is literally the liberation of childhood and the society as a whole. All I can do is
applaud, with a grateful heart.”
—JosePH CHilton PearCe
Specialist in early child development; Author – Magical Child,
Evolution’s End and The Biology of Transcendence
“The report on the study of the Test Edge program is impressive and convincing. The find-
ing that the TestEdge program led to improvements in student emotional awareness, emo-
tional management, and classroom interactions makes this an effective method for han-
dling challenging and stressful situations such as the current emphasis on testing in U.S.
schools. It is impressive that the program not only reduced test anxiety but also improved
test performance. It is even more impressive that this technique can transfer to other situ-
ations, providing a tool for facilitating the development of positive emotions, cooperative
relations, and more effectiveness as well as personal satisfaction.”
—riane eisler
Cultural historian; Author – Tomorrow’s Children: Partnership
Education for the 21st Century and The Chalice and the Blade
“This is a very well designed and carefully executed study using state of the art assess-
ment techniques confirming that emotional stress impairs academic performance. It also
demonstrates the ability of the TestEdge intervention to significantly improve test scores
by reducing test anxiety based on personal report as well as objective heart rate variability
measurements. School failure was described in a recent interview and book as the lead-
ing cause of premature death in the world and is particularly high for minority groups in
the U.S. As noted, “The incidence of all types of heart disease increases as education de-
creases and this stunning relationship is not due to increased poverty or poorer access to
medical care.” This underscores the need for new innovative approaches such as those
described in this study that can improve not only health but also the quality of life by re-
ducing stress.”
—Paul rosCH, m.D., F.a.C.P.
President, The American Institute of Stress; Clinical Professor of
Medicine and Psychiatry, New York Medical College
vi Reducing TesT anxieTy and imPRoving TesT PeRfoRmance in ameRica’s schools
Endorsements
“The Institute of HeartMath’s TestEdge National Demonstration Study accomplishes
its primary purpose of testing the efficacy of a program designed specifically to improve
the emotional well-being and academic performance of public school students. Utilizing
a more robust, diverse sample population, the study validates previous research on the
positive impact of the TestEdge program on test scores, passing rates, and psychosocial
functioning. The results clearly show that student affect has a largely unrecognized and
underappreciated impact on the variance in student performance.
Importantly, the study finds that HeartMath tools produce long-lasting effects on students’
psychosocial functioning, well past the intervention period. This finding is especially en-
couraging when viewed across the range of programs in which students may learn new
skills to encourage emotional and physiological coherence. One of the study’s surprises
is that girls’ responsivity to test stress and a test reduction strategy is different from that of
boys. This strongly advances the debate for strength-based approaches to teaching/learn-
ing in the classroom. Overall, the findings of the Test Edge study motivate educators to
pursue the highest level of thoughtful, evidence-based instructional methodologies in our
public schools.”
—Jorge CalzaDilla
Director, Youth Learning Institute, Clemson University
“Stress and anxiety are ubiquitous in modern society, perhaps nowhere more so than
among America’s youth. Children and adolescents are faced, not only with developmental
challenges inherent to their age, but also the challenges of living in a fast-paced world with
instant electronic access to world wide news and opinions through social networks such
as MySpace and FaceBook. In addition, students face social and academic tests in person
at school and in their neighborhood. Families are less stable and more dynamic than a gen-
eration ago, and local supportive networks through clubs, churches and civic groups are
declining, while formal mental health services are inadequate in most communities. Given
the increased challenge and decreased availability of stable social support, it is no surprise
that students experience high levels of stress and anxiety.
This combination makes emotional self-management tools a high priority for educators
and clinicians. This report contains hopeful and inspiring data about the effectiveness of
one such program, TestEdge. Both quantitative and qualitative data in large numbers of
students suggest impressive improvements in stress, anxiety and test scores. These results
suggest that this program should be implemented widely to enhance the health and
achievements of our next generation.”
—KatHi J. KemPer, m.D., m.P.H.
Caryl J. Guth Chair for Holistic and Integrative Medicine, Professor, Pediatrics
and Public Health Sciences, Wake Forest University School of Medicine
© Copyright 2007 Institute of HeartMath vii
viii Reducing TesT anxieTy and imPRoving TesT PeRfoRmance in ameRica’s schools
Executive Summary
This Executive Summary provides an overview of the purpose, research methods,
and major findings of the TestEdge National Demonstration Study conducted by
researchers at the Institute of HeartMath in collaboration with faculty and graduate stu-
dents at Claremont Graduate University. The Summary has been designed with section
headings to assist the reader in locating the appropriate chapters or sections within the
main body of the report.
Study’s Purpose
The study’s primary purpose was to investigate the efficacy of the TestEdge program
in reducing stress and test anxiety and improving emotional well-being, quality of re-
lationships, and academic performance in public school students. This involved de-
termining the magnitude, correlates, and consequences of stress and test anxiety in
a large sample of students and investigating the degree to which an intervention with
TestEdge had a positive effect on students in an experimental group when compared
to those in a control group. A second programmatic purpose was to characterize the
implementation of the program in relation to its receptivity, coordination, and admin-
istration in a wide variety of school systems with diverse cultural, administrative, and
situational characteristics.
TestEdge Program
For the purposes of this study, both teachers and students received instruction in Heart-
Math tools and techniques through the Resilient Educator and TestEdge programs, re-
spectively. Used as the intervention in this study, these programs were developed by
the Institute of HeartMath to help students and teachers reduce stress and test anxi-
ety, improve test and academic performance, and enhance emotional and relational
competence. The programs are based on 15 years of scientific research on the psycho-
physiology of learning and performance, emotional dynamics, and heart–brain com-
munication. The programs teach a set of easy-to-use positive emotion refocusing and
restructuring techniques that enable teachers and students to self-regulate stress, test
anxiety, and other emotional impediments to learning and performance.
© Copyright 2007 Institute of HeartMath ix
Executive Summary
The basis of the effectiveness of the techniques is that they enable the individual
to self-activate a specific, scientifically measurable psychophysiological state of opti-
mal function, termed psychophysiological coherence. Research has shown that psy-
chophysiological coherence is characterized by increased synchronization in nervous
system activity, increased emotional stability, and improved cognitive and task perfor-
mance.
The TestEdge program has been successfully implemented in schools throughout
the U.S. and in some foreign countries; pilot studies have shown associated improve-
ments in student standardized test scores, passing rates, and psychosocial functioning.
This study marks the first time that the efficacy of the TestEdge program has been evalu-
ated in a large-scale implementation.
Study’s Hypotheses
The study tested two major hypotheses. The first is that enhanced competence in emo-
tional management through learning and practicing the TestEdge tools would result in
significant improvements in student emotional self-regulation and psychophysiologi-
cal coherence. These changes then would produce a marked reduction in test anxiety,
which, in turn, would generate a corresponding improvement in academic and test
performance. Secondly, as a result of the improvement in student emotion regulation
skills, it was also expected that there would be associated improvements in stress man-
agement, emotional stability, relationships, and overall student well-being, as well as
in classroom climate, organization, and function.
Research Design and Methods
To investigate the veracity of these hypotheses, two studies were conducted, each with
different research objectives and designs. The first, the primary study, focused on an
in-depth investigation of students at the tenth grade level. It was designed as a quasi-
experimental, longitudinal field study involving pre- and post-intervention panels of
measurement within a multi-methods framework.
For the primary study, extensive quantitative and qualitative data were gathered
using survey questionnaires, interviews, structured observation, and an assessment
of student drawings, along with student test scores from two California standardized
x Reducing TesT anxieTy and imPRoving TesT PeRfoRmance in ameRica’s schools