PRZYGOTOWANIE UCZNIÓW DO EGZAMINU: POKUSA ŁATWEGO ZYSKU
TEST PREPARATION: THE TEMPTATION OF EASY PROFITS

Summary/Abstract: The temptation of easy profits is a tendency to spend too much effort on teaching skills which can yield big testing gain and are relatively easy for the students to master. If this tendency grows, we will face a steady increase in external testing scores accompanied by a steady deterioration of the students’ education. The question is how to prevent this. The answer is based on semi-structured interviews with 31 teachers from 15 lower secondary schools in Warsaw whose students have excelled either in easy or hard teachable skills at the external testing. The research findings support a two-fold answer. Firstly, it is recommended to immunize teachers against the temptation of easy profits by making their identities dependent on professionalism, confidence in their own capabilities of solving problems, pleasure of interacting with the immaturity, and understanding that the nature of cognitive gain that tests claim to measure is much more complex then their authors believe. Secondly, it seems necessary to weaken the temptation itself by substantive diminishing the predictability of the form and content of annual external tests.

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