Using Self-Assessment and Remediation to Raise Middle School Student Achievement in History

Cognitive Structure Analysis (CSA) is an educational framework designed to help students identify and address knowledge deficits through (self-)assessment, enabling them to remediate gaps in understanding. Previous studies have demonstrated the reliability of teaching students to use CSA to assess their own knowledge in various academic disciplines, including calculus (Cynkin and Leddo, 2023) and chemistry (Dandemraju, Dandemraju, and Leddo, 2024). These studies, however, primarily focused on the identification of knowledge gaps rather than their remediation. As accurate assessment does not inherently address deficiencies, later studies began to investigate CSA’s role in addressing the gap. Ravi and Leddo (2024) conducted a study in which high school students learned an advanced chemistry topic by watching a video. Half relearned the material while the other half self-assessed using CSA and relearned the material with an eye to filling in assessed knowledge gaps. Students performing self-assessment prior to relearning material scored 15 points or 1.5 letter grades higher on a post-test. Similarly, Nehra and Leddo (2024) replicated this approach in Spanish instruction, finding that CSA-trained students scored an average of 25 percentage points (2.5 letter grades) higher than those who simply reread the material without self assessing.