Evaluation is therefore connected with Teaching Practice to satisfy the two points mentioned above i.e to determine the extent the student-teachers are able to put into practice the theories and methods of education and to award grades to the student-teachers to signify their teaching competence.
Teaching Effectiveness
Contents
Obemeata (1983) opined that an effective teaching is one that has been adequately prepared for at least a day before the teaching, one that has been well presented to the learner and finally one that has been adequately evaluated both formatively and summatively.
The more effective teachers are usually those who plan their teaching with much conscientiousness and intensity as if their whole career as teachers depends on the plan.
It is expected that an effective teacher should have high class control and be of pleasant personality. The broad areas of a teacher’s personality include:
Physical characteristics: since physical characteristics entail outward appearance, we can also include a teacher’s mode of dressing as part of his personality.
Temperament: This entails typical emotional behavior and characteristic mood. A good teacher should be patient, calm, poised and composed.
Intelligence: This includes skills, information storing and retrieval system, creativity and competencies. An effective teacher should have a mind which leans towards conceptualization, generalization and abstraction.
Interests: These include what a person likes and what he dislikes. A good teacher is expected to be interested in the teaching. He is expected to be interested in his pupils’ welfare and also meeting with the needs of his pupils.
Morals and values: These include such characters as honesty, conscientiousness, dedication, self-control, tactfulness, etc.
Motivational dispositions; These include needs and motives (achievement motive and affiliate motive). A good teacher should be able to work cooperatively with colleagues. He should also, in his bid to achieve set objectives, be preserving and not easily discouraged.
Expressive and stylistic traits: They constitute habitual behaviors such as politeness, submissiveness, talkativeness, shyness, consistency and hesitancy.
Classroom Management
Classroom management has been viewed in terms of tactfully handing materials and pupils that are found in teaching-learning situation.
It is the method employed in handling all the components of the classroom to achieve the intended objectives. The components of the classroom include:
(a) The classroom itself and some facilities
(b) The learning materials
(c) The learners
(d) The teacher
In classroom situation, there are interactions between and among the above components. There could be teacher-pupils, pupils-material and teacher-material interactions.
The ability of the teacher to manage these interactions determines the extent to which intended objectives would be met.
Discipline is an associate of class management and control, which are necessary for efficient students’ participation, teachers’ guidance and good personal relationships.
The extent to which a teacher could sustain the interest of his pupils throughout the lesson period would determine the quality of the control the teacher could have over his pupils.
Also, a particular teaching method employed would require a particular strategy of controlling the class.
The general activities a teacher could perform to maintain good classroom control and management are keeping the class busy, making instructions to be very clear, stamping out deviant behaviours firmly and sustaining the interests of the learners in the lessons.
Evaluation Instrument
Efforts have been made to develop evaluation instruments for assessing a teacher’s teaching competence. Most of the behaviours which are deemed to be essentials for effective teachings are usually assessed.
A host of the evaluation instruments attach a maximum score to each of such behavior which is supposed to be measured along a continuum i.e. they adopt the Ikert Scaling Model.
For example, The Ondo State University, Ado-Ekiti (OSUA) has developed an evaluation instrument for teaching. This is entitled:
Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) form illustrated in this chapter. The first section requires information about the name of the student teacher, his orher matriculation number, his or her school of practice, the subject the student-teacher teaches, the topic he or she teaches, the day and the date he or she teaches it and the class and the time of the teaching.
The second section of the instrument contains pre-determined behaviours for effective teaching. These are supposed to be rated along specified continuums.
The six broad categories of the behaviours so identified in the instrument are as follows: Plan of the lesson, teaching aids or devices, conduct of the lesson, knowledge of subject matter, class management and teacher’s personality.
A total of 45% is attributed to conduct of the lesson, plan of the lesson and teaching aids/devices attract a maximum of 15% each while each of the knowledge of subject matter and class management attracts 10%.
Teacher’s personality has a share of 5%. Each of the six broad behaviours is still sub-divided. A student-teacher therefore should take note that an excellent performance in teaching practice can only be achieved if he/she prepares adequately for each of the sections of the TPA form.
Interpretation of Overall Grades
The students are supposed to be engaged in six weeks of Teaching Practice in each of their penultimate and graduating years.
The average of the student’s grades in the two teaching practices is usually taken to decide on the level of teaching competence of the student. An interpretation of te overall grade for a student is given below.
Just a sample
70% and above A Distinction
60 — 69% B Credit
50 – 59% C Merit
45 — 49% D Pass
40—44% E pass
Below 40% F Fail
High Intra-Observer and inter-Observer Reliability Demanded
Intra-observer is a measure of consistency in an observer’s grading of a teaching situation more than once. A correlation of the observer’s measures yields intra-observer reliability. The closer the obtained value is to one the more reliable the observer is.
Inter-observer reliability is a measure of agreement between the grading of two or among several grading of observers of some situations.
The cooperating supervisors and the college/university supervisors are to be made to simultaneously observe and grade some teaching situations. A correlation of such grading would yield the inter-observer reliability.
A high value of inter-observer reliability is desirable for effective evaluation of teaching competencies of the student-teachers.
Conclusion
As it has been stressed in the discussion above, the major reason for Teaching Practice is to make student-teachers cultivate the skills for effective teaching.
The student-teachers should therefore maximize relationship with the college or university supervisors and the cooperating supervisors to cultivate the needed skills.
In addition, the student-teachers should be familiar with the evaluation instrument presented above and they should internalize the skills for effective teaching.
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