Evaluation of Clinical Teaching with Regards to Student Learning and Competency - Lab Report Example

? Designing and Implementing an Evaluation of the Quality of Your Clinical Teaching of Introduction While some people consider it lightly, teacher evaluation is a rather complex exercise, which entails a series of interconnected activities having the same set of objectives. The fact that all in the teaching profession have certain complex problems implies that their professional work should be assessed to ascertain their standards. This evaluation may be done by their peers, students, and other expert evaluators. However, all these evaluators should focus on the nature and the extent of the professional problems to be solved and the improvements to be implemented. It is also worth noting that teacher evaluation exercises should focus on teaching practices rather than on individual teachers. To focus on professionalism in the teaching industry and in individual teachers, evaluations should consider the responsiveness and the involvement of others in such exercises. The key processes or stages in a teaching evaluation exercise include planning, preparation, observation, data collection, reporting, and follow-up. Notwithstanding the approaches used in teacher evaluation, these exercises should form an integral of the larger strategy education and teacher improvement. The other important part of teacher evaluation is its being dialogical rather than hierarchical. Teacher evaluation is not a preserve of the education industry; instead, other industries such as nursing also require teacher evaluation exercises as nurses require continual training and refresher course. Evaluation of clinical teaching with regards to student learning and competency is quite instrumental in giving teachers, administrators and employers of training programs an overview of the quality of the teaching and learning practices of those involved. However, that clinical teacher should also be evaluated makes it necessary for those concerned to design and implement various teaching evaluation policies and approaches. The design and the implementation of clinical teaching evaluation tools is thus quite a crucial undertaking in nursing and other types of clinical education. This paper designs and implements a nursing teaching evaluation for the employer, detailing the approaches used in the evaluation and changes suitable for improving future nursing teaching. Nursing Teaching Evaluation and Improvement There are several reasons for which the undertaken nursing teaching evaluation was conducted. First, nursing teaching evaluation helps employers and administrators to gauge the effectiveness of teaching personnel, thus contributing to informed and wise decision making in clinical educational institutions. One method by which the nursing teaching evaluation was done is the use of student evaluators. It is often recommended that administrators and employers assess the evaluation tools used on their reliability, relevance and validity. In this nursing practice evaluation, the development process and psychometric testing for clinical and educational evaluation of teaching were applied. Since the students were required to fill without feeling their time was being wasted, the evaluation instruments had to be relatively short. The instruments were quite useful in meeting the reasons for which evaluation is such an important part of nursing and nursing education. The first aim of the evaluation was to determine whether the educational interventions used are effective in assisting learners to achieve the expected outcomes. Just in the same way as students are constantly assessed to determine their progress, so should nursing teachers. A five-evaluator program, which is a rather accurate and valid evaluation approach critical in the education of competent professional nurses, was used in the nursing teaching evaluation. The evaluators included educators, students, peers, administrators and heads of programs and/or departments such as pediatric, health, administration, medical-surgical, psychiatric. However, students and educators were the ones used most to collect the needed data. There are five major methods/practices by which the evaluation process was conducted including self-appraisal, teacher tests, performance observation, rating scales and student achievement (Pritchard et al., 1998). However, the most commonly used evaluation practices were student achievement, performance observation and rating scales while the least used were teacher tests and self appraisal practices. Methods of Evaluating Nursing Teaching The aim of the nursing teaching evaluation was to collect feedback for the improvement of teaching practices and to help in developing a portfolio for career development and future job application. Further, the information would be useful for personnel decisions and actions such as reappointment, job tenure and promotion among other processes. Although a number of methods could have been applied for the evaluation, the best design was picked. Since the evaluation’s main purposes were related to personnel decision, the comprehensive and systematic process involving many stakeholders was implemented. Because of the many dimensions of academic work, various measures of data sources were evaluated including instructional delivery, course planning, grading and assessment, course management, support for experimental learning, service learning and support for student internship (Elliot et al., 2000). While the instructional delivery component of the evaluation sought data on amount, quality and level of instruction, its course planning aspect targeted the development of new courses, course materials and course revision. Grading and assessing on the other hand evaluated the use of appropriate type and level of assignments, exams and grading standards. The other aspects of nursing teaching evaluated included curricular work, advising, mentoring and professional development and innovation (Elliot et al., 2000). Teacher Evaluation Feedback for Teaching Improvement There is extensive feedback from the evaluation that would be useful in improving future nursing classes. Although there is no tailor-made measure by which nursing teaching could be made perfect, teachers can really gain a lot from the findings of student and peer evaluations of their teaching practices. From the evaluation’s findings, there are various suggestions on how nursing teachers may approach such evaluations and their implications. First, nursing teachers should be prepared to effect certain changes once an evaluation exercise is implemented. The huge amount of data available from an evaluation should not confuse one’s mind but should be used to identify areas of weakness for strengthening. That is, this information should be used for focusing on improvement efforts and strategies. Though one may become skeptic or frustrated with the outcomes of such an evaluation, it is the interest teachers have in improving their teaching practices that should be supreme. This interest to improve will in fact put the frustration and skepticism concerns aside and one seeks the way to becoming a better teacher from the collected data. If one gets defensive or feels insulted by the findings of an evaluation, he/she may find it difficult to absorb the criticism therein and use it for improvement. It is thus advisable that teachers prepare for the worst possible evaluation before venturing to read the collected information. A single harsh verdict should not erase the overall good message that may come out of an evaluations exercise. In fact, most harsh statements may come from young, rash and unprepared respondents such as students who are not interested in the possible effects of their responses or merely want to make one feel incompetent. A nursing teacher should therefore look at the general trend of the received data rather than concentrate on a few negative statements from the feedback. For instance, what do the numbers and the comment trends reveal about one’s teaching strengths and weaknesses? One should also be on the lookout for outliers because even the best teachers will always get a negative remark in some of the feedback (Pritchard et al., 1998). These outliers should therefore not dampen a teacher’s spirits. Nonetheless, the outliers would be equally important in revealing certain hidden features of a teacher and ignoring them could be detrimental to one’s professional and personal development. Rather than respond to feedback in a defensive tone, it is advisable to seek explanation where a response is not understood. There evaluation and assessment of nursing teaching practices conducted could be categorized as formative, summative, and process assessment. Further, the assessment was conducted at the subject, department, and institutional levels and ranged in scope and size on different aspects of teaching. The assessment thus involved a variety of methodologies. However, the evaluation efforts most applied during the exercise were the formative and the summative types. In the formative approach to assessment, the results obtained from the exercise would be used for forming and revising the nursing educational efforts used for the purposes of educational practices and programs improvement. The use of the formative assessment was specifically favored due to the fact that it is quite ideal for higher educational institutions such as nursing colleges. In addition, the constructive feedback of the formative type of teacher assessment is also effective in the nursing profession where nursing teachers always want to expand and strengthen their educational and professional abilities. On the other hand, the summative approach to teaching practice assessment is applicable where documentation of outcomes and the judging of outcome values are of great importance. It is also quite useful in availing assessment results to teachers on the quality of their instructional methods and programs. The other uses of the summative type of teacher assessment are to inform other stakeholders on one’s teaching practices and their quality, thus providing information for accreditation besides marketing the strengths of a the concerned teacher. Though not used in the study, process assessment is the other type of assessment often used in teaching practice assessment. It is important in the identification and the assessment of practice milestones intended to be reached and the activities by which these milestones are to be achieved. Also important in process assessment are the products to be achieved at the end of these milestones. Process assessment also gives an overview of the finances and other resources that would be used to achieve given educational milestones in specified periods (Stufflebeam & Webster, 1999). This type of teaching practice evaluation is thus mostly applied in situations where one would like to establish whether the teaching markers have been achieved within schedule and at the intended costs and that the deliverables have been produced. Issues, Resources, and Challenges of Teaching Evaluation Nursing teaching evaluation, like any other type of evaluation, has numerous issues related to ethics, resources, and challenges that surround its implementation. Consequently, nursing teaching assessment has become a rather hotly debated issue in the nursing and educational sectors. It is thus of the essence that those involved, especially teachers, be on the lookout for these challenges. Due to some of these challenges and controversies surrounding teaching evaluation, it has become necessary that regulators such as the federal, local, and state educational authorities and governments establish stringent laws and regulations to guide the planning and the implementation of teaching evaluation across all sectors (Stufflebeam & Webster, 1999). In establishing and putting these laws and regulations into practice, more so for the nursing industry, it is necessary that the authorities consider the input of stakeholders such as nurses, nursing homes, nursing students, nursing teachers, and their employers. The contribution of these stakeholders will not only be the best but will also be quite useful in the creation of strong teacher evaluation systems, quite effective in enabling teaching nurses to continually improve their practices for better student learning and understanding (Stufflebeam & Webster, 1999). The first step in this path to establishing a strong teacher evaluation is seeking stakeholder opinion on a sensible and professional teacher evaluation system. There are several obvious features of a professional and sensible teacher evaluation system that should also be implemented. First, a teaching evaluation system should match the variety of understanding and perceptions of quality teaching that cuts across the entire range of teacher development. The expectations of a teacher evaluation system should also be unambiguous for teaching practices across all levels. Teacher valuations should also be guided by sound standards for each level of education. Even as these teaching standards guide teaching evaluations at all levels, it is important that these evaluations account for the requirements for successful teaching across all distinctive teaching contexts. The frequency of teaching practice evaluation is the other hotly debated issue in teacher evaluation with many stakeholders asserting that evaluations should be as frequent as possible to allow constant improvement. Second, these evaluations should be conducted by expert evaluators such as teachers (Stufflebeam & Webster, 1999). These evaluators should have the right expertise in working with peers, having been trained in the areas of teacher quality recognition and development. Importantly, teacher evaluators should have a vast understanding of content evaluation and the specific tools and procedures for evaluating different contexts and aspects of teaching. The other core element of teacher evaluation is useful feedback, which must be connected to teachers’ professional developments and the exploitation of any opportunities for improvement (Stufflebeam & Webster, 1999). These evaluation feedbacks should also be reviewed by expert teams to ensure their consistency, reliability, and fairness. Generally, teaching evaluation systems should have the following features. First, they should have clear and concise standards that are aligned with the relevant and the range of teacher development strategies and goals of a given states or regions. Second, evaluation systems and programs should be continuing and accompanied by frequent data gathering (Stufflebeam & Webster, 1999). As mentioned earlier, teacher evaluations should also be conducted under expert instructions and should apply numerous perspectives proposed expert teams of teachers, principals, and other educationists. Conclusion Teacher evaluation is a complex exercise involving a series of interconnected processes geared towards the realization of a given set of objectives. However, its main aim is often to enable teachers improve their standards, performances, professionalism. Evaluations are often done by teachers’ peers, students, employers, administrators, and other expert evaluators such as educationists. The aspects of teaching majorly evaluated are instructional delivery, course planning, grading and assessment, course management, support for experimental learning, service learning and support for student internship. The collected data should then be studied non-defensively and without prejudice for the identification of weaknesses, strengths and the implementation of interventions for teaching improvement. Further explanation should also be sought on areas not understood. Evaluations of nursing teaching practices are grouped as formative, summative, and process assessment, which could be done at the subject, department, and institutional levels and often range in scope and size. The formative approach involves obtaining results from the exercise for use in forming and revising educational efforts used for the purposes of educational practices and programs. References Elliot, S. N., Kratochwill, T. R., Cook, J. L., Travers, J. F. (2000). Educational psychology: Effective teaching, effective learning. Boston: McGraw Hill. Pritchard, R. D., Watson, M. D., Kelly, K. and Paquin, A. R. (1998). Helping teachers teach well. California: The New Lexington Press. Stufflebeam, D. L., and Webster, W. J. (1999). An Analysis of Alternative Approaches to Evaluation. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. 2(3), 19. Read More