Showing posts with label English. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English. Show all posts
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (2009)
Introduction: In recent years, there has been a growing concern for improving the quality of achievement of all learners at elementary and secondary level. But this aim to improve learner’s quality and to universalize the improved quality is not being realized totally due to imperfect teaching – learning process and improper evaluation practices which are conventional and narrow in their scope. In order to bring some quality improvement, the National Policy of Education (1986) recommended that minimum level of learning (MLL) be laid down at each stage of primary education and that steps be undertaken in terms of teaching and evaluation to ensure that all students attain minimum level of learning.
Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation introduced on 20th September, 2009 and formulated by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibbal. And the first phase of teacher training was initiated in October, 2009 and carried on till December. In first phase the numbers of private independent schools covered were 6051 and the number of teachers and principals trained were 15497. This is the new teaching method introduced recently to decrease the accumulated stress of board exams on the students and to introduce a more uniform and comprehensive pattern in education for the children all over the nation. CCE helps in improving student’s performance by identifying his/her learning difficulties and abilities at regular time intervals right from the beginning of the academic session and employing suitable remedial measures for enhancing their learning performance. CCE is the modern method of evaluating all the prime dimensions of a student’s personality that of how much he has been through out.
What is CCE?
CCE is an education system newly introduced by CBSE in India, for students of sixth to tenth grades. The main aim of CCE is to evaluate every aspect of the child during their presence at the school. This is believed to help reduce the pressure on the child during/before examinations as the student will have to sit for multiple tests throughout the year, of which no test or the syllabus covered will be repeated at the end of the year, whatsoever. The CCE method is claimed to bring enormous changes from the traditional chalk and talk method of teaching, provided it is implemented accurately.
New scheme of CCE
As a part of this new system, student’s marks will be replaced by grades which will be evaluated through a series of circular and extra-circular evaluations along with academics. The aim of CCE is to reduce the workload on students and to improve the overall skill and ability of students by means of evaluation of other activities. Grades are awarded to students based on work experience skills, dexterity, innovation, steadiness, teamwork, public speaking, behavior etc. to evaluate and present an overall measure of the student’s ability. This helps the students who are not good in academic to show their talent in other field such as art, humanities, sports, music, athletics, etc.
Marks and Grades system in CCE
In CCE, the marks obtained in an exam are usually not revealed. However, equivalent grades, which would be deduced using a special method by the teacher during evaluation would be revealed. This is considered as a since a child with 92 marks will get the same grade as the child with 100 marks and their talents cannot be recognized by anyone else other than their teachers. Though this system might have some drawbacks it instills this value that students need to complete themselves to get a better grade and not with others. The grading system is as follows-
CGPA | Grade | Qualified? | Merited? |
9.1-10.0 | A1 | Yes | Yes |
8.1-9.0 | A2 | Yes | Yes |
7.1-8.0 | B1 | Yes | Upon upgradation |
6.1-7.0 | B2 | Yes | Upon upgradation |
5.1-6.0 | C1 | Yes | No |
4.1-5.0 | C2 | Upon upgradation | No |
3.1-4.0 | D1 | Upon upgradation | No |
2.1-3.0 | E1 | No | No |
1.1-2.0 | E2 | No | No |
Description with reference to English
Objectives of teaching English are framed in the light of overall environment of the child which includes social, political, national, cultural and economic aspects of life. Those objectives naturally include scholastic and non-scholastic areas. Through continuous evaluation judgment about the child is made continuously. The objective and efforts to achieve those objectives remain in the process of review and revision till the desired ends are achieved.
For more details refer book named “Communication in English” written by Dr. Shankar Mukharjee (Professor in Faculty of Education, Jamia Millia Islamia)
What are the practical problems in implementation of CCE
CCE has created more chaos rather than being welcomed by schools. The bewilderment it has generated is equivocal amongst school managements, teachers, students, parents, publishers and other agencies working in the field of education. Thus, there are schools demanding intensive CCE training for different stakeholders. Students feel that it will mean more assessments for them on an ongoing basis. Teachers feel that their work has increased tremendously with assessments having additional ‘descriptive indicators’.
It is shocking to look at some solutions that have immediately come up in the market like the CCE software which will help teachers grade the descriptive indicators. Such solutions further state that there is no need for anecdotal records; a software will grade all life skills, attitudes and values. Then, there are publishers who feel that adding more worksheets or assessments in books will make their books CCE-centered.
However, what is visible through all these efforts is the lack of understanding of the framework and ideology behind implementing CCE. Let’s examine some facets of CCE.
- Assessments should capture all three major goals of education – the psychomotor, cognitive and the affective.
- It does not imply breaking syllabus into smaller bits and testing students weekly through class tests because this is again paper and pencil assessment.
- It does not emphasize formal assessments only, rather assessments or observations are to be made in informal settings like break-time, in the corridor, in the playfield, etc.
- It goes beyond assessment as only a post-learning experience, rather it emphasizes on assessments to be made during the learning experience.
- It emphasizes on documenting the learner’s efforts in learning, processes of thinking to be captured through assessments.
- Emphasis is also on tailoring instruction according to different learning styles and assessing differentially. Differential assessments would mean giving more scope to learners to exhibit their understanding of concepts in a variety of ways like – role play, collecting material and displays, reading and writing tasks, surveys, presentations, etc. All these have to form a part and parcel of each theme that is dealt with in a classroom.
- Assessment to be continuous implies that children need to be assessed throughout the year through a range of tools and techniques.
- CCE tends to make assessments school-based and done by teachers. It does not mean increasing the subjective bias while assessing. Rather it implies that teachers need to corroborate their comments with concrete observations and anecdotes of learning.
- It also shifts the onus of assessing a learner not only to the class teacher rather assessment to be collaboratively done by all the subject teachers. Thus, this process of collaboration increases objectivity and validity instead of generating bias.
What goes behind the implementation of CCE?
Shared lesson planning: Time needs to be set aside for teachers to plan lessons collectively. Not only the same subject teachers, but also collaboration of resources ought to happen with teachers taking up different subject areas. This shall encourage cross-curricular exchange.
Reduced teacher pupil ratio: It is absolutely essential to have a small class, with the teacher-student ratio not exceeding 1:30 for effective implementation of the scheme. In the changed scenario, a teacher ought to maintain a number of records like child’s portfolios, anecdotal records, prepare checklists, rubrics for assessment. All this only becomes viable with a small class size.
Sustained reading time: It is often observed that classroom issues remain only the prerogative of the class teacher. Her action on day to day class issues is often left to her practical wisdom. There is never an effort made to allocate time for helping teachers read on fundamental classroom issues, explore different research areas. Thus, reading amongst teachers is dying out. It needs to be a sustained school routine where pedagogical issues are addressed.
Understanding pedagogy:As teachers it is important to understand different discourses in pedagogy. The field is evolving and thus even if we as teachers might have not undergone a formal course in the pedagogy of different disciplines, it is never too late to start reading to understand the learning process and how it relates to the child’s mind. An M.A. or any such degree in the core subject area, say for example English, or Physics, does not generally include and therefore does not assume knowledge of pedagogy. Nor does a B.Ed. degree make a complete course in pedagogy. There are different courses in pedagogy being offered for different disciplines and understanding of this is absolutely integral to teaching and evaluation of learners.
Flexible timetable: The implementation of the scheme also implies flexible timetables. Imagine the plight of the child’s mind buffering between different subjects one after the other, switching on and off within the span of 30 minutes. Further, to observe the processes of learning, every subject shall require block periods of at least one hour ten minutes to justify teaching, learning and simultaneous evaluation. In case of an outdoor activity, this time maybe extended.
There are many more systemic changes which ought to be in place before the implementation of CCE. Flexibility, change and willingness to learn are the key factors.
Bibiliography
3. http://www.teacherplus.org/comment/impact-of-cce-in-schools(5th Dec’12)
5. Elizabeth, M.E.S and Rao, Digumarti Bhaskara, Methods of Teaching English, Discovery Publishing House, Ansari Road, Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110002 (2007)
6. Dr Shankar Mukharjee, Communication in English (2012).
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