M. Nazmul Haq :
Evaluation of achievement is the heart of education. It provides the validation and reliable measures of our continuous effort to educate the generations. Evaluation is not only a numeric representation of success or failure; it is also a qualitative stand against ones’ accomplishment. Teachers, for ages, adopted their wisdom to evaluate their disciples’ performance in the day to day life. And that evaluation always proved its success in later life as well, i.e., their evaluation had predictive value. As the number of students grew, teachers’ qualifications expended and demand from market is growing therefore, the evaluation system has been transformed into a more objective and compartmentalized exercise.
The science of evaluation in modern scientific era is stat oriented and targeted effort. Thus the whole exercise became very much focused and unidirectional. However, the quality evaluation is something different. In fact the quality as a whole is not a compartmentalized ability; it is an integrated and interrelated talent of a person. This talent cannot be measured only by using Alfa-numeric figures rather it demands to include other valued measures to express the quality of the function.
Pedagogy is not entirely an objective discipline as such. It is a liberal scientific and humanistic discourse used in education. Pedagogical training provided to teachers and educationalists confers such skills to foster quality education. Unfortunately, the great concerns have been expressed about the quality of teacher education in the country by the researchers and scholars for its commercialization. As a result their performance in evaluating students’ achievement is also jeopardized.
Current practice of evaluating students’ achievement in schools is very controversial for being a non-pedagogical exercise. Teacher evaluates student’s achievement on the basis of his/her own teaching and guided preparation. Under this type of evaluation students are supposed to provide predetermined structured answers. Here student’s own write-up or reflective answer is not appreciated. Most schools and coaching centers supply readymade answer to the students for securing high score. The practice is obviously contradictory to pedagogical approach and that ultimately contributes to rotememorization of the student.
The main defect of present evaluation system is that it creates a group of rote learners through a structured rigid examination system. The current evaluation approach appreciates only the Alfa-numeric value of the achievement, which ultimately does not correlate with the actual talent. The result has no use in rectification of the teaching strategy or identification of weak students for remedial measures. Even the hierarchy of the system cannot rely on the validity of the evaluation and therefore, another incompatible evaluation is done in the name of admission test. So, the effectiveness of the existing evaluation becomes redundant.
The scientific aspect of evaluation is to consider all the three dimensions of a subject like, knowledge, understanding and the way it is presented. That is, evaluation of achievement is a function of knowledge, understanding and delivery of content. It is also necessary to keep in mind that the product being evaluated should not exceed the level of the student. Because, measure of competence is the ultimate purpose of evaluation so that it can predict the future change in behavior. The evaluation itself is an indicator student’s success or failure and so has a link to intervention of special needs or modification of curriculum.
The problem is inherent within the system. Education and scholasticism both are now equates with score in examination. Teachers and parents compare and value students in terms of GPA and position in the merit list. In order to achieve these pseudo criteria teaching learning has transformed into dissemination and acquisition of facts and information. Therefore, the overall scenario has transformed into a denial of pedagogy in evaluation. Unless we come out from this erroneous belief, the evaluation cannotvalidate the achievement.
Evaluation of achievement is needed to be understood by all concerns. Systematically we need a paradigm shift; the process of evaluation should follow the pedagogical norm. In order to get a real picture of achievement emphasis should be given on formative assessment rather than the summative one. It requires time to transform the scenario and for that matter the teacher and school should take the initiative first prior to convincing the students and parents that numeric figures are always secondary to real achievement.
(M. Nazmul Haq is Professor, Institute of Education and Research (IER), University of Dhaka)
