Death of an outcome – consequences of stigmergy in our examinations

Abstract

This paper reports on an analysis of questions in physics examination papers at matriculation and first-year university level. The intention is to throw light on an on-going concern, sometimes expressed by university level physics instructors, that there is a general weakness in problem-solving ability among their students. This begs several questions; the first and most obvious one being what we mean by ‘problem-solving’. The second is whether this perceived weakness has an objective reality. Evidence supporting this can be found in both the literature and in examination results. The third question asks what might be causing this state of affairs. To attempt to answer this, examination papers at both matriculation and university level (first-year) were analysed with a view to finding what types of questions are typically asked, and to ascertain whether there may perhaps be a bias in favour of - or against - specific types of question. The evidence shows that there is indeed a favoured question-type that can be explicitly taught, and relatively easily mastered - and which typically makes up a sufficiently large fraction of an examination that a candidate can pass the examination without having to demonstrate any real problem-solving ability. What an examination candidate does need to demonstrate is a well-developed ability to expedite routine operations at various levels of complexity, which - depending on one’s espoused definition - does not amount to problem-solving. The bias away from novel (or heuristic) problem-solving is here seen as a stigmergic sign that indicates to candidates, instructors and examiners alike that the ability to deal with novelty, which is the essence of problem-solving, is not needed in order to pass - or even to do well in - these high-stakes examinations. Hence the need either to teach or to learn problem-solving could come to be seen as unnecessary. This state of affairs is repeated - and hence reinforced - at each successive annual iteration.