The effectiveness of educational test tasks in mastering theoretical material in psychology
DOI: 10.23951/2307-6127-2026-2-131-139
This article examines the quality of student training in the “Pedagogical Education” program across various psychology majors (section “General Psychology”). It notes that both foreign and Russian educators and psychologists are concerned about the fact that students learn basic psychological concepts pro forma, and that they typically use everyday, rather than scientific, psychological knowledge in their future professions. Western and Russian experience in using various forms of testing in the educational process at universities to improve and monitor learning quality is analyzed. Four main types of testing tools are identified: a control test, an educational test, an educational case test, and educational test tasks. An empirical study identified the advantages of using educational test tasks to improve the acquisition of basic general psychological concepts: sensation, perception, attention, memory, thinking, emotions, and will. Sixty first-year students from Yelets State University participated in the study. Two groups were formed. One of the groups (the control group) was trained using traditional academic tests, which simply required recall of theoretical material. The other (the experimental group) solved academic test problems during training. The results of the empirical study showed that the quality of material learned in the experimental group was significantly higher. The criterion for assessing the quality of mastery of general psychological categories was the ability to provide competent examples (illustrations) of the manifestation of memory, attention, thinking, emotions, etc. in real life, which is traditionally used for such purposes. Students in the experimental group were more successful in this area: they cited examples from both academic test problems and from their own lives or mass media. Students in the control group were more likely to be unable to provide acceptable examples or to provide examples that were inconsistent with the material being learned. It has been shown that test problems, with their clear practical focus, also allow for a better understanding of the theoretical essence of psychological categories.
Keywords: educational tasks, test tasks, acquisition of psychological knowledge, learning effectiveness
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Issue: 2, 2026
Series of issue: Issue 2
Rubric: PSYCHOLOGY
Pages: 131 — 139
Downloads: 16