If we are to ever have a meaningful and accurate evaluation of childrens performance, certain things must change. Amongst them is our concept of marks. When you answer a question to the expectation of a teacher you get full marks. But nowhere does a teacher says what those expectations are (other than, of course, asking for word-to-word copy of the text book).
If your answer is less than expected then you get less marks. But if your answer is better than the expectation then you don't get more marks for that question. Why is that ? This, standard marking scheme, is designed to filter-out better than expected performance of children. We are almost saying - reproduce what is given in the text-book and get maximum marks.
The expectation is never quite defined, let alone expecting the excellence. Ask a child, parent, teacher or a school about what is expected as answer and you will get very vague, fuzzy talk. Often-times, children are left to guess how much to write based on how many marks are there for the question - as if number of words is the only way to judge the quality.
In absence of these guiding standards, students are left to judge for themselves, while teachers can always say that 'your work is not good enough'. But good enough for whom ? How much is enough ? What is good ?
What needs to be done is - for each ability that you are testing, you need to say what will give you marks as well as what will make you lose marks. What are you looking for and what are you discouraging. Both need to be told to students before-hand so that they can learn to work on these guidelines.
For example, if you are evaluating for neatness then - good handwriting, neatly cancelled mistakes, well-drawn margins, sense of proportion (add to this list) is what you are looking for. Tell this to the students. More importantly, also tell the students what is no-no - badly erased mistakes, sloppy handwriting, no margins (add to this list). Both do's and don'ts need to be spelled out.
If we follow this for every aspect that we are evaluating, then there is a scope that quality learning can happen. Else, the whole enterprise of marks is a gigantic but futile exercise.
If your answer is less than expected then you get less marks. But if your answer is better than the expectation then you don't get more marks for that question. Why is that ? This, standard marking scheme, is designed to filter-out better than expected performance of children. We are almost saying - reproduce what is given in the text-book and get maximum marks.
The expectation is never quite defined, let alone expecting the excellence. Ask a child, parent, teacher or a school about what is expected as answer and you will get very vague, fuzzy talk. Often-times, children are left to guess how much to write based on how many marks are there for the question - as if number of words is the only way to judge the quality.
In absence of these guiding standards, students are left to judge for themselves, while teachers can always say that 'your work is not good enough'. But good enough for whom ? How much is enough ? What is good ?
What needs to be done is - for each ability that you are testing, you need to say what will give you marks as well as what will make you lose marks. What are you looking for and what are you discouraging. Both need to be told to students before-hand so that they can learn to work on these guidelines.
For example, if you are evaluating for neatness then - good handwriting, neatly cancelled mistakes, well-drawn margins, sense of proportion (add to this list) is what you are looking for. Tell this to the students. More importantly, also tell the students what is no-no - badly erased mistakes, sloppy handwriting, no margins (add to this list). Both do's and don'ts need to be spelled out.
If we follow this for every aspect that we are evaluating, then there is a scope that quality learning can happen. Else, the whole enterprise of marks is a gigantic but futile exercise.
No comments:
Post a Comment