Benefits of testing memory: Best practices and boundary conditions

The idea of a memory test or of a test of academic achievement is often circumscribed. Tests within the classroom are recognized as important for the assignment of grades, and tests given for academic assessment or achievement have increasingly come to determine the course of children’s lives: score well on such tests and you advance, are placed in more challenging classes, and attend better schools. Against this widely acknowledged backdrop of the importance of testing in educational life (not just in the US, but all over the world), it would be di?cult to justify the claim that testing is not used enough in educational practice. In fact, such a claim may seem to be ludicrous on the face of it. However, this is just the claim we will make in this chapter: Education in schools would greatly bene?t from additional testing, and the need for increased testing probably increases with advancement in the educational system. In addition, students should use self-testing as a study strategy in preparing for their classes.