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

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. Prakash and Leddo (2025a) built on the findings of Ravi and Leddo (2024) and Nehra and Leddo (2024) by investigating CSA’s plus remediation’s applicability to reading comprehension; post-test results displayed that the CSAtrained group scored an average of 93%, outperforming the control group’s 69%. Prakash and Leddo (2025b) built on prior research by investigating the applicability of CSA in learning Bayes’ Theorem, a foundational concept in probability theory and statistics. The investigation of CSA was continued through analyzing its impact in history, where post-test results revealed the significant statistical difference between the control and experimental groups, the control scoring an average of 65.8% compared to the experimental group’s 87.5% (Prakash and Leddo, 2025c). Leddo, Clark and Clark (2025) extended the previous work on high school students with middle school students and found that self-assessment using CSA plus remediation improved math scores by 18 percentage points compared to remediation without self-assessment. This investigation of CSA plus remediation was continued in the context of middle school students’ ability to comprehend a reading passage. Post-test results revealed the control scoring an average of 61.7% as opposed to the experimental’s 78.3%. This study investigates the impact of CSA combined with targeted remediation on middle school students’ performance on a science assessment. Twenty students were randomly assigned to either a control or experimental group. Both groups read a lesson The control group re-engaged with the material without guidance, while the experimental group used CSA to self-assess and target their remediation efforts. Results revealed a significant performance difference, with the experimental group scoring an average of 98%, compared to the control group’s 77.5% (t=6.26, df=18, p=.0001). These findings suggest that CSA combined with remediation can substantially improve middle schoolers’ comprehension and mastery of science content.