Evaluation is the result of the teacher’s concern with the goals of education. In his role as an evaluator, the teacher asks himself such questions as the following: “are students making any progress in the direction of the goals appropriate to his learning situation? What evidence indicates whether or not they are progressing? How much progress if any, are they making? To what extent can their success (or failure) be attributed to the experience that they had in the classroom?”
The teacher’s role as an evaluator of learning may appear to be somewhat at odds with his roles as a simulator and promoter of learning. Many a teacher has worked with a class for a number of weeks, trying to build group feeling, only to see the class freeze up and suddenly become uncommunicative when he announces an examination. At such time, he might wish that final marks in his course were limited to pass-fail, thus relieving him of the responsibility of grading the performance of individual group members. These problems are aggravated when the teacher has become immersed in the group process and has come to think of himself as a fully functioning member of the classroom group.
it is not easy to coordinate the warm and human roles of the participant in the teaching-learning with those of the cool, detached, and objective roles of the observer, but this is a problem that every teacher must face and resolve. It would seem that he can preserve the greatest professional freedom if he resolves the issues himself, rather than have them resolved by external authorities. If he is to create some kind of balance between participant and observer roles, he should be as familiar with teaching techniques. “Evaluation.” As Herbert J. Thelen (1969) say, “plays a part in all strategies of instruction; he not only has inferior data to communicate to authorities and to hid students but he may develop misconceptions about the effect that his teaching is having on student’s”, the best justification for evaluation to have any real meaning, we should do it as objectively and as carefully for ourselves and out students as we otherwise do it on behalf of others.
By: Gloria P. Lumanglas | Teacher III | Lamao Elementary School | Limay, Bataan
