Teacher Effectiveness - Lesson Evaluation Tool - Assignment Example

Part 1: LESSON EVALUATION TOOL Class 36 Period 14 It will be important to be objective the rating of the domains and aspects on this evaluation tool as it will help in establishing Student-tailored teaching. Please respond to the prompts as a way of evaluating the effectiveness of the teacher and the teaching strategies in this lesson. The scale uses units of 1 (low) through to 5 (high) OBJECTIVES The teacher made efforts to achieve the objectives of; 1. Defining World Wars 1 2 3 4 5 2. Identifying the types of world wars 1 2 3 4 5 3. Discussing the causes of the first world war 1 2 3 4 5 TEACHER 1. Has knowledge of the subject matter 1 2 3 4 5 2. His content was related to the objectives 1 2 3 4 5 3. Could respond to questions and issue beneficial clarifications 1 2 3 4 5 CONTENT 1. Appropriateness to the learners 1 2 3 4 5 2. Was related to objectives stated at the start of the lesson 1 2 3 4 5 TEACHING METHODS 1. Use of any visual aids, handouts or for clarity of content 1 2 3 4 5 2. The methods used well and effective to the topic of world wars 1 2 3 4 5 RELEVANCE 1. Can the content and methods be practical in real world 1 2 3 4 5 2. Content can be helpful in personal career pursuits 1 2 3 4 5 SUGGESTIONS ON IMPROVEMENTS IN CONTENT ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ GENERALIZED REMARKS Tick as appropriate; __need to be re-taught. ____change strategies. ___the lesson was met expectations. Part 2: Explanation of Application An evaluation tool is usually tailor made to identify strengths, weaknesses omissions and commissions that were part of a particular program. For this case, the Key Learning Area is History and focuses on the Topic of World Wars. This is a topic that is usually complex for learners to comprehend if a lesson is not well strategized. The teacher therefore, has to utilize various teaching aids to help in making learners grasp the content. This evaluation tool assesses the strengths of the teacher in the lesson and the weaknesses. The teacher himself does not do this evaluation, but the learners who are the clients. They are the most reliable source of feedback as they are on the receiving end of either poor or good teaching. However, what the learners express on the effectiveness of the teaching in the lesson can help the teacher in assessing their own strengths. For a topic as boring to learners as the World Wars, the teacher requires good communication ability, a mastery of content and superb delivery strategies as these in themselves are a motivation to learners to strive and understand. A poorly planned lesson does not draw much of the learner’s interest in the lesson and the topic and hence the teaching is poor (Mclenerney 2006). When the teaching is poor the learning is even worse. This tool is appropriate for high school grades since they at their average age have the ability to make judgments on issues. This tool will reinforce the strengths of the teacher which learners found useful. Some of the abilities that may come out as being likeable are good content mastery, eloquent and clear speech and a good response to any clarifications that students may seek. However, when a teacher wishes to establish any lapses he commits that amount to ineffectiveness; such a tool will be useful. Learners will rate the teacher on how they apply aids, award a score on knowledge-ability and other attributes of the teaching in a specified lesson. The best results will be realized if this tool is used at the beginning of the topic so that the teacher assesses himself early enough. However, its usefulness would also require that it be used on an occasional basis in the course of covering the unit. This assessment yields information that could be as feedback as well. The feedback will inform future strategies and plans as to how best to plan a lesson on the topic. If administrators can use this information, they may be informed about the necessity to change a teacher, acquire more learning materials and all this sums up to improved effectiveness. This will also help a teacher in adopting learner-centered methods as opposed to those that are teacher-centered (Townsend and Bates 2007). Without a feedback from the learners using a good teacher evaluation tool, learners may make many assumptions which may adversely affect delivery of content. This tool is also a good avenue of expression by the learners about the quality of teaching services they receive as they do not risk being victimized incase what they say may be unpleasant. Part 3: Justification In the preparation of this evaluation tool, putting of the student’s power to comprehend it was vital. This was because students needed to fathom the objective behind this evaluation in order to comprehend it and make their judgments about the teaching (Groundwater-Smith, Le & Ewing 2007). Informed by this, it was only logical that the tool be easy for the learners to understand. This was the reason why the assessment tool has a simple structure that all of the students with their varied abilities can rate. However, considering what the evaluation has to achieve regardless of the participants in the evaluation was key in choosing the design and applying the structure. The motive behind evaluating in the first place was to assess the effectiveness of teaching. Effectiveness of teaching cuts across many domains rather than just one or two. In this case, the whole assessment begins with the very idea of having the test (Mclenerney 2006). The best people who would tell whether teaching was effective or not are the learners or students. They are in a better stead to know if they learned something in that lesson. Being in the lesson, they can tell which part of it did help them in understanding and which part was only a pass time. Someone who is not learning would not experience the lesson in a similar way. This settled it all that more than any other person or party, the tool would have students as the evaluators of effectiveness of teaching (Churchil 2013). This meant that the design, structure and content had to be made to suit the decision. As such, the domains to be evaluated had to be those that students could easily note and hence increase the reliability of the evaluation. Teaching is usually all about identifying the objectives, strategies and methods. The teacher then organizes the content according to the strategies and the eventual delivery will highly rely on the preparedness and the teacher’s professional attributes. This assessment tool focuses on these key aspects of teaching that are observable attributes displayed during a lesson. They are things the student has to experience in the lesson and state its significance in the whole teaching process (Kyriacou 2001). The learner then uses them to express her judgment of the effectiveness the teacher, his strategies and how the objectives of the lesson were achieved. As away of keeping the evaluation tool easy and without complications for the learner, the evaluation used numerical measurements. This is easier to judge as opposed to using remarks such as good, excellent or fair. Attaching a numerical value to a certain domain of evaluation such as mastery of content is also easy to make analysis of the information. The information can be used to calculate a score and come up with a percentage of the teaching’s effectiveness. A good consideration was made as to the possible users of the evaluation and it needs to carry a universal relevance on all the users (Hayes, Mills, Christie, & Lingard, 2006). Since an evaluation has a long-run aim of informing actions, policies and decisions, the judgment should come from a good grading or evaluation criteria. The use of numbers in this case reduces chances of subjectivity as opposed to using remarks. From previous evaluation which used other criteria of evaluation other than numerical, students were not awarding judgments that give a valuable assessment of effectiveness. There was a lot of subjectivity in assigning meaning to the whole evaluation and hence reliability was low (Churchil 2013). Considering the challenge of reducing as much subjectivity in the research as possible, it was the best option to use numerical criteria of 1, 2,3,4,5, to measure effectiveness with 1 representing the lowest level of effectiveness and 5 the highest. This is definitely easy to comprehend and offers higher possibilities of dealing with subjectivity. The evaluation also used statements rather than questions. For example on the objectives, the teacher made efforts of defining World Wars. This is for the purpose of enhancing validity (Kyriacou 2001). Research indicates than in evaluations that use questions especially those that need yes or no responses, they have a high possibility of influencing bias. However, those that are just stated are not sharp enough to have learners think of other influences outside the lesson itself in assessing the teaching. This is why responses that involved yes/no were avoided and designing of the evaluation did not use questions. As for the content of the research, learning is driven by aims that have to be achieved in a specified time limit. The whole effectiveness of teaching revolves around the achievement of objectives. A teacher should ensure he does everything in any one lesson in the direction of achieving set objectives. This is what informs the methods, strategies and teaching activities (Ramsay & Shorten 2006). Directed by this, a teacher has to make every effort to ensure he keeps his sight on the objectives no matter what direction a lesson might take . In the case of this evaluation, student’s feedback on how they feel the teacher kept on focus and made bids to stay objective is the most reliable. Learners are the ones who manifest the attributes of teaching that has attained its aims (Townsend and Bates 2007). How they saw the teacher explain himself, involve them and undertake activities can help in assessment of the effectiveness of the teacher. In this case, the student does not focus much on whether they understood or not but on the fact that the teacher did all he could to ensure he achieves his set objectives. However, if a teacher does this and puts in all his efforts to get students understand and realize the lesson’s aims, there is no reason if at all, any as to why learners should not understand. In assessing the efforts a teacher makes in ensuring he achieves the objectives, an evaluation of a teacher’s own attributes is necessary. For a topic that has little luster and appeal as World Wars, it would require a teacher who can keep the motivation of learners high. Every aspect of a teacher has an impact on his effectiveness in teaching and when learners assess them, they indicate what areas of the teacher’s characteristics impact on his effectiveness. This assessment does not only yield weaknesses but strengths that students appreciate (Ramsay & Shorten 2006). The mastery of content that teacher possess is a vital part of the teaching process. Any teaching that lacks this in the teacher’s attributes is doomed to ineffectiveness. The teacher should also have the ability to handle the questions of the learners effectively as this is the only way by which a teacher clarifies any content that has may have been missed or misconstrued. However, the pivotal part of the teaching is the content itself. Any word, action and activity during a lesson are content. Even a joke or a story makes part of content. This means that a teacher has to ensure that every of his undertakings during a lesson are related to the subject matter. The content has to be appropriated well to suit the objectives so that only what is too vital is made part of the teaching. Besides, the evaluation tool assesses the content visa-vis’ the level of the learners. A teacher should ensure the content is to the level of the learners for it to be effective (Hayes, Mills, Christie, & Lingard, 2006). This means that the teaching methods also need to be at bar and should enhance comprehension of the subject matter. This tool assesses the methods the teacher uses which enhanced delivery. They are effective they are appropriate for this topic World Wars and apply to the general methods used in teaching History. This means that selection of teaching aids is a result of wide consideration. In the end of it all, the learner should be able to connect what he learns with the real world. This is the task of the teacher to ensure his delivery connects the subject matter to the real life or practical issues. This would make the teaching a memorable experience that learners can not easily forget. This teaching tool is very effective for high school grades where learners can make objective judgments and hence participate in the evaluation of the effectiveness of the teaching they receive. However, it may have limited reliability in cases where students may resort to base on personal issues in informing their response to the prompts on the evaluation tool. In such a case, it will only lead to skewed conclusions that may mislead decision making and formulation of policies (Mclenerney 2006). However, it does well in focusing on key areas of teacher effectiveness. It assesses the objectives of the lesson and how the teacher makes efforts to achieve them. It also evaluates teacher’s characteristics including how much knowledge of the subject matter they posses. It then relates the relevance of the content to the objectives. The evaluation of teaching which bases on the feedback of the learner is very effective as the use of this one may prove. Learners participate in recommending improvements and changes in the teaching they are exposed to. Reference Townsend, T., & Bates, R. J. (2007). Handbook of teacher education: Globalization, standards and professionalism in times of change. Dordrecht: Springer. Groundwater-Smith, S., Le, C. R., & Ewing, R. (2007). Teaching: Challenges and dilemmas. South Melbourne, Vic: Thomson. Hayes, D., Mills, M., Christie, P. & Lingard, B. (2006) Teachers Making a Difference, Sydney: Allen & Unwin. McInerney, D. M. (2006). Developmental psychology for teachers: An applied approach. Crows Nest, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin. Ramsay, I. M., & Shorten, A. R. (1996). Education and the law. Sydney: Butterworths. Churchill, R. (2013). Teaching: Making a difference. Milton, Qld: John Wiley and Sons. Kyriacou, C. (2001). Essential teaching skills. Cheltenham [England: Nelson Thornes. Read More