Sharing Student Projects

Students facing public exams for the first time in three years are in a different context to the cohorts who went before them and to those that will come after. The most recent A-Level year group have had their General Certificate of Secondary Education and Advanced Subsidiary Level exams cancelled and significant portions of their education in the last three years disrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This academic year, however, has been largely uninterrupted and with a sense of a return to something closer to normality, A-Level students have now sat their exams. This dissertation was designed to explore some of the experiences of these students. In particular, the aim of this dissertation was to investigate whether a student’s perceived ability to manage their own learning (or self-regulated learning) had an impact on the level of anxiety they were experiencing in relation to their exams (or test anxiety). It also sought to explore if the context of COVID-19, and how well students felt they had been able to prepare effectively for their exams, had an influence on the relationship between their self-regulated learning and test anxiety. This is important because the context of COVID-19 meant that students had to manage their studies more independently and it also had an impact on mental health and well-being. As test anxiety is a separate, though connected, experience to other forms of anxiety, it was an appropriate focus for this particular situation, in which exams have returned as a part of students’ experience of this phase of their education. By using a survey that was shared through teachers with A-Level students in six schools in England, this research attempted to capture the perceptions of students in this particular moment in time. It gave a sense of how these concepts may be correlated with one another and if self-regulated learning predicts test anxiety. It could not say whether one element was causing the other or identify specific changes in this population overtime. However, by statistically exploring the extent to which test anxiety can be predicted by self-regulated learning and by exploring whether this relationship was influenced by a student’s perception of how well they were able to prepare for exams during COVID-19 disruptions, the dissertation was able to come to some key findings. The research found that there were differences in the relationship between self-regulated learning and test anxiety, depending on what element of test anxiety was being considered. Self-regulated learning did predict overall test anxiety, and cognitive test anxiety, which is related to the thoughts and worries that someone might experience in relation to an exam. Self-regulated learning, however, did not predict affective-physiological test anxiety, which is related to the emotions and physical sensations, like increased heart rate and sweating, that might be associated with test anxiety. Students with lower selfregulated learning tended to have higher test anxiety and cognitive test anxiety. The research was also found that how well a student felt they had managed the disruption to their exam preparation due to COVID-19 accounted for most of the relationship between self-regulated learning and test anxiety. Another key finding was that the COVID-19 exam preparation element changed the relationship between self-regulated learning and test anxiety – if a student’s COVID-19 experience was very positive, it was more likely that their level of test anxiety would be lower, even when their self-regulated learning level predicted it would be higher. Some things are 69 still not clear, however, for example whether self-regulated learning had a direct role in how well the students managed their exam preparation during COVID-19 disruption, or what these connections might mean for these students in their future education or other experiences.

This dissertation may have an impact in several areas. For example, it may be that schools or other educational institutions that wish to address levels of test anxiety that their students are experiencing should target self-regulated learning as a potential source of resilience during exam preparation. Although this research cannot say that an intervention such as this would be successful, it may have a few benefits. It could support students in providing them with strategies for learning and managing their time and resources well. It may develop their confidence and clarify for them how their exams will challenge their skills and knowledge, through strategies such as self-testing. By better preparing students for exams, self-regulated learning interventions may help them in experiencing less test anxiety. Conversely, using levels of test anxiety as one way to measure the success of such an intervention may help to further illuminate the relationship between test anxiety and self-regulated learning. Another area of impact may be by highlighting the need to support this cohort of students. In experiencing a very different few years of school compared to what they might have expected, the students from this year’s A-Level cohort may have different needs to others as they enter the workplace, university, or other fields of training. Although we cannot say it is because of the pandemic, it appears that the level of test anxiety experienced by these students is high. Other research has concluded that students and adolescents who were impacted by the pandemic have higher levels of mental health issues, as well as significant lost educational experiences. Recognising the potential for different or additional support for students and working to gain insight into the needs of these students may be important for their future success.