Reflective Research paper

Reflective Research paper

Darvesh Karim

Assistant Instructor

Professional Development Center, North

University Road, Konodass, Gilgit.

Ph. No: (+92) 05811-454132-4 Ext: 3017

Fax No: (+92) 05811-454135

Cell No: (+92) 03465419307

Email (Official): darveshkarim@pdcn.edu.pk

Email (Private): dk_hunzai@yahoo.com, darvesh.karim@gmail.com

Online Blogs: www.dkhunza.blogspot.com; www.scribd.com/dk_hunzai
TABLE OF CONTENT

INTRODUCTION.. 3

The Context 3

Current Practices. 4

Issues and Challenges. 5

MY LEARNING THROUGH THIS COURSE.. 6

Implication......................................................................................................................... 7

CONCLUSION.. 7

REFLECTIVE RESEARCH PAPER

PRESENT M&E PRACTICES OF STUDENT ASSESSENT AND PROGRESS AT HASEGAWA[1] MEMORIAL PUBLIC SCHOOL, KARIMABAD HUNZA, DIST. GILGIT, NORTHERN AREAS OF PAKISTAN

INTRODUCTION

Monitoring and evaluation of students’ performance and progress is an essential part of school system which determine the effectiveness of school and help the teachers and learners to moderate their achievement throughout the academic year. As Shoemaker & Lewin (1998) say that careful and continuous monitoring and evaluation is an integral part of effective school because it enables teachers to determine more effective ways of teaching and learning. It helps teachers to address students’ learning problems before these problems affect students’ achievements.  

This paper is focused on monitoring the students’ performance and progress. It discusses a specific school context, what monitoring and evaluation mean to it, what are the processes and procedures, the current practices of school, issues and challenges. Then it describes my own learning and understanding through the ME&R course and its implication in future followed by concluding remarks.

The Context

Karimabad Hunza is a touristic destination. Every year thousands of foreign trekkers and cultural tourists visit the area. In 1991 during an attempt to scale Hunza peak, a Japanese climber Mr. Tsuneo Hasegawa was killed by an avalanche. The local community struggled very hard to find out the dead body of the climber from the glacier. The climber’s widow was also accompanying the community during their quest. After recovering the body, he has been buried in the area by fulfilling the last wish of the climber (informed by the deceased widow). Keeping the hard work and unselfish efforts of the community, the widow offered a huge amount and assured of a continuous funding for a project in the memories of her late husband. Resultantly an NGO came to being to think and plan the effective utilization of this fund. The idea of initiating an English medium school was conceived by the community to provide quality education to the young generation at their door step. Mrs. Masami Hasegawa (the widow) after consultation and with unanimous support of the community, resolved to meet this challenge. She agreed in principle to co-sponsor the project along with the Karimabad Welfare Association - The NGO to manage the school. After complete construction in 1998 classes are being run. Now with the grace of Al-mighty God and with effective participation of the community, the much-aspired institution is now running in full swing. The school is fully operational with classes from Nursery to Class X (English Medium).

Current Practices

For monitoring and evaluation of students’ assessment, data is collected by the Principal, Vice Principal and Section Co-ordinators. Mostly this data is in the full access of Principal, Vice Principal, and all the class teachers, while BOG president, Education Committee Convener and members have also access to it. The data is normally used for student assessment, yearly progress and reporting to different stakeholders.  Usually we use the reports, minutes, attendance registers, financial statements and report cards as a source of monitoring and evaluation information for students’ assessment.

Monitoring is carried out in pre-primary section of school through students’ performance indicator tools, which have been developed and used throughout the academic year by the concerned staff members. So, it is a form of self-evaluation system which happens on ongoing basis to monitor students’ performance and progress. MacBeath & Glyn (2002) also suggest that self evaluation encourages teachers, parents and school leaders to come to judgments based on their firsthand knowledge, while Cladwell (2004) describes that more developed school improvement processes are using a self-evaluation framework as a leadership and management tool. The teachers are monitoring students’ knowledge, skills, and relationship during their classroom activities. They use various tools for the purpose of collecting data and to evaluate the students’ performance and inform the interested parties including management and parents on monthly/quarterly/annual basis. Furthermore, other sections of school perform the traditional way of students’ assessment (formative and summative assessment) depending on monthly classroom tests, quarter, midterm and annual exams. However, the final examination of primary section is centralized all over Hunza in private schools under the supervision of HERP^[2]. It is considered that students should perform their progress through listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. More focus is given only on paper pencil test but some other school based activities are also conducted throughout the academic year that provide opportunities for students to perform their progress such as celebrations, parents day and other co-curricular activities. However, I am encouraged to see the existing practices that we have been doing a bit well as we frequently evaluate what we do, although most of the time this is not done in any structured way (Aspinwall, et al, 1992), but I look forward to improve further by involving teachers and other stakeholders in the process with proper documentation and structured format.

Issues and Challenges

Green (1975) says that a lot of information gained from summative evaluation is often wasted because it does not provide feedback into the teaching process as formative assessment does. Weindling & Pocklington (1996) define ME&R as, “it involves the gathering of formative data, which are used to inform and shape the process of development. It is important to stress that this element extends throughout the process of school improvement and is not a late add-on” (p. 46). I found that the process we are using is non-systematic rather a random process. Monthly and class tests are purely limited to the concerned teacher, which needs to be reviewed regularly and design action plan accordingly. While the most challenging issue for validated and authenticated assessment of students and staff members should be professionally sound, so that the process could be initiated smoothly, but personally I feel that we are lacking in professionally trained staff members. Secondly, almost everyone in the institution should be involved in some way to collect data that can be used in monitoring and evaluation, but in decision making the voice of every stakeholder is not properly heard.

According to my understanding, monitoring and evaluation is best done when there has been proper planning with proper objectives against which to assess progress and achievements, and I should confess that currently we work randomly without a proper plan and this is an issue for its actual implementation and process.

My Learning Through this Course

After attending the session of ME&R, I realized does monitoring and evaluation mean and how it can be conducted in school to improve the performance of students and school. This course provided me a broad perspective through classroom participation, facilitator’s input and rich literature on the topic. The researchers and educational reformer have clearly suggested that it could be a continued process of quality education in school context when the stakeholders define their own standard and criteria based on their own needs. Evaluation needs to be linked with development (Hopkins, 1989) and according to Mazda, Jones & Lord (2000) monitoring is a process of looking after the planned activities and checking to what extent things have gone in accordance with the plan while evaluation is the process of data analysis, discussion and reporting of evidence, which leads the evaluator to value judgment.  According to Chelimsky & Shadish (1997) monitoring and evaluation is based on three perspectives; Accountability, Knowledge, Developmental.  The purpose of Accountability perspective is to measure results, to determine costs, to assess efficiency; Knowledge perspective is to generate insights about problems, policies, programs and processes, to develop new methods and to critique old ones; Developmental perspective is to strengthen institutions, to build institutional capability in some evaluative area (Chelimsky & Shadish 1997). All these ideas are only possible when the school stakeholders will take an active part in this process because this is not such an activity that could be defined and planned out side of the school.

Sax & Newton (1996) describe that evaluation is one of the important duties of teachers. The teachers identify the performance indicators using SWOC^[3], SWOT^[4] & Force Field Analysis, so that they could be able to realize the actual needs being within the limitations of the available resources. Monitoring and evaluation facilitate the right decision making in a critical situation based on evidence. According to Aspinwal, et al (1992) M&E is part of the decision-making process. It involves making judgments about the worth of an activity through systematically and openly collecting and analyzing information about it and relating this to explicit objectives, criteria and values. Therefore, Hopkins (1989) presents the model of this process in four groups of variables that should be considered regarding each object. They focus on (a) the goals of the object; (b) its strategies and plans; (c) its process of implementation; (d) its outcomes and impacts. Evaluation should serve the information needs of all actual and potential parties - ‘stakeholders’. It is the responsibility of the evaluators(s) to describe the stakeholders of an evaluation and to identify or project their information needs. Therefore, the necessary requirements for continuous and effective monitoring in school practices are:  documentation, internal self-evaluation to pull ourselves towards goal/vision.  According to Jenkin, Jones & Lord (2000) evaluation must be done constructively, focusing on achievement rather than on failure. It allows to demonstrate what students know, rather than to catch them out. An annual exam seems comprehensive in nature; it evaluates students’ learning and provides accountability.

Implication

I assume self-evaluation in pre-primary section is an ideal process, which needs further expanding & strengthening systematically. Secondly, apart from the written assessment, we need more focus on other elements and skills of learning like listening, speaking and reading. For better results and reliability we have to involve every individual among the stakeholders in monitoring and evaluation process. We will have to focus on professional development of teaching staff as well. Finally for effective monitoring and evaluation we have to prepare proper planning and its documentation. We have to focus on all three main perspectives of monitoring and evaluation i.e. Accountability, Knowledge, and Developmental as I feel that currently we are only focusing on the accountability perspective.

CONCLUSION

Concluding my argument, I would say that for an effective monitoring and evaluation system either in teachers appraisal, students performance and progress, school management conditions or in teaching and learning facilities and resources, we, as school leadership should provide constant feedback, identify potential problems, monitor the accessibility of the institution, monitor the efficiency, evaluate the extent to which the institution is able to achieve its general objectives, incorporate views of stakeholders. To achieve all this we have to create awareness among all the stakeholders to bring greater “ownership” of institution. Ownership brings accountability, efficiency development and knowledge all-together.
RFERENCES

Airasian, P. W. (2005). Classroom Assessment. Concepts and applications. (5th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.

Aspinwall, K. et al (1992). Managing Evaluation in Education: A development Approach. London: Routledge.

Chelimsky, E., & Shadish. (Eds.). (1997). Evaluation for the 21st Century: A Handbook. London: Sage Publication.

Cladwell, B. J. (2004). A strategic view of efforts to lead the transformation of schools. School Leadership & Management.  24(1), 81 – 99.

Green, J. (1995). Teacher made tests. (2nd ed.). New York: Open University Press.

Hamilton, D., & Roos, B. (2005). Formative assessment. A Cybernetic viewpoint. Assessment in education, 12 (1), 7-20.

Hara, J. O., & Mcnamara, G. (2004). Trusting the Teacher. Evaluating Educational Innovation. London Sage, 10, 463-474.

Hopkins, D. (1989). Evaluation for school development. Milton Keyens: The Open University Press.

Hopkins, D., Ainscow, M., & West, M. (1994). School improvement in an era of change. London: Cassel.

Hopkins. (1989). Evaluation for school development. Philadelphia: Open University Press.

Jenkin, M., Jones, J., & Lord, S. (2000). Monitoring and evaluation for school improvement. Britain: Heinemann.

MacBeath, J., & Mc Glynn, A. (2002). Self-evaluation: What is in it for schools? London: Roultege.

McCann, P., & Harris, M. (1994). Hand books for the English classrooms: Assessment. Scotland: Heineman.

Rogers, G., & Badham, L. (1992). Evaluation in school: Getting started on training and implementation. London: Routlge.

Sax, G., & Newton, J, W. (1996). Principals of educational and psychologically measurement and evaluation.

Weindling, D., & Pocklington, K. (1996). Improving secondary schools through organizational development. In P. Early., B. Fidler & J., Ouston (Eds.), Improvement through inspection. Complementary Approaches to School Development. (pp. 309-330).

Wiggins, G, P. (1993). Assessing Students’ Performance. Exploring the Purpose and Limits of Testing. London : Routleg

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[1] I intentionally used the actual name of my school as it is only between me and my facilitator, so no ethical issue at all.

[2] HERP – Hunza Educational Resource Project. Almost 20 English Medium schools of Hunza are affiliated with the institution, which provides teacher trainings and standardized exam papers.

[3] SWOC – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Challenges.

[4] SWOT - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.