Assessment

We explain what an evaluation is, what it is for, its instruments and other characteristics. Also, types of educational evaluation.

What is evaluation?

The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy defines evaluation as the “action and effect of evaluating”, that is, “estimating, appreciating, pointing out the value of something”, and immediately links it with the school and educational world. Probably because our first formal experiences with the process of being evaluated come precisely from there, from school and academia.

Defined in this way, in the abstract, the evaluation is the action of judging or measuring a procedurethat is, to indicate how well or how badly it turned out, or how close it came to the objective that we had initially set.

In the educational field, it has to do with the acquisition of a specific and specific series of knowledge, practices and knowledge, but in other areas it may have to do with the professional performance of a team, with the manufacturing of a product or any other activity. measurable, evaluable.

Any evaluation, therefore, depends largely on the results expected in advance, and on the system that is used to measure the actual results, in which the criteria used to evaluate must be specified. In other words, Every evaluation involves checking reality against a series of pre-established criteria..

In general terms, Evaluation as a discipline emerged during the 19th centuryhand in hand with the deep industrialization process carried out by the West.

It is the result, in some way, of the application of scientific thinking and standardization to different social processes, especially school training, which brought with it the study of learning (psychology), the design of educational tools and the organization of educational curricula (education).

In general terms, the refinement of evaluation methods has allowed societies to have better control of their results in the different areas of their interest. Thus, it is possible to feed back the processes with information that, in the long run, serves to make decisions that lead to the improvement of said processes.

Evaluation Features

The evaluation is characterized by the following:

• It consists of the comparison of the results obtained in a process (productive, educational or of any other nature) against the results initially established.
• For this comparison uses different measurement tools or proceduresdepending on the nature of the matter, that allow obtaining information regarding the evaluated performance.

In general, it contemplates three fundamental purposes:

• Collect information regarding the evaluated process.
• Analyze the information obtained to draw conclusions.
• Thus, define the achievements achieved and those not achieved, in order to be able to feedback the process.

What is the evaluation for?

As we have said before, evaluation has the fundamental purpose of subject a specific process to judgment and evaluation.

This means that you must not only judge whether and to what extent the initial goals were met, but also obtain information regarding what the setbacks werewhich were the unexpected failures, which were the predictable ones and, in general, which were the characteristics of the process that can subsequently be modified: corrected, improved, rethought, etc. Evaluation is, above all, a feedback mechanism.

Evaluation instruments

Instruments are the different real and concrete tools that allow obtaining information regarding the evaluated process. They can be of different types and nature, such as:

• Questionnaires.
• Inquiry sheets.
• Graphic tabs.
• Personal reflections and/or self-evaluations.
• Forms.
• Dynamics of contrast of experiences.
• External supervision or observation.
• Peer review.

Types of educational evaluation

Educational evaluation is one that allows gathering information about the different elements of the educational process: the students, the study materials, the teacher, the facilities, etc. Especially well-known (and sometimes feared) are those that evaluate the student's performance, that is, they allow us to judge how much or how well a student has learned a subject and in a given period of time.

Said evaluation can be of three types, depending on the evaluative dynamics:

• Self-assessmentwhen the student himself must judge his performance and his acquired knowledge of the subject.
• Heteroevaluationwhen the judgment regarding the student's learning comes from a third party (commonly the teacher who teaches the subject).
• Co-evaluationwhen the evaluation is reciprocal between two or more students, taking the place of the evaluated and the evaluator.

Importance of educational evaluation

Educational evaluation is a fundamental tool for the school process, whose proper use Provides the information necessary to optimize the processimproving increasingly in the training of future generations. In this sense, educational evaluation offers fundamental results in two different areas:

• The diagnosis or initialwhich serves to understand the starting point of the subjects who go through the educational process. This area provides information on the previous educational stage, if any, or on the basic academic level at different stages of citizen life.
• The formative or proceduralwhich serves to understand how fruitful the educational process was: how suitable its mechanisms are, how convenient its tools and, in conclusion, how we are thinking about education, and therefore, in what new ways we can rethink it.

Continue with: Pedagogical approach

References

• “Evaluation” on Wikipedia.
• “Evaluate” in the language dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy.
• “Types of evaluation” at Universidad Nacional Abierta (Argentina).
• “Educational evaluation: concepts, functions and types” in the Institute of Human Sciences Foundation.
• “Evaluation and its importance in education” by Felipe Fernández Canul in Nexos.
• “Evaluation: Fundamental pillar of education” in EDUCREA (Chile).