Farewell to the ＂one-man show＂ evaluation of teachers
If the teacher’s evaluation is done properly, the children can jump high. The picture shows the kindergarten in Danyang City, Jiangsu Province, cultivating children’s brave spirit, and the little man simulated vault training and successfully crossed the "obstacle". Photo courtesy of Gu Liqin Jiang Wen Zhou Zhusheng
The Guiding Outline of Kindergarten Education (Trial) points out that managers, teachers, children and their parents are all participants in kindergarten education evaluation. The evaluation process is a process of mutual participation, mutual support and cooperation. However, in the actual educational evaluation of kindergartens, the evaluation of children is often just a monologue of teachers.
Teacher monologues are active and passive monologues.
Teachers’ monologues can be divided into active monologues and passive monologues. Active monologue means that teachers do not welcome other subjects to participate in evaluation; Passive monologue means that other subjects actively choose not to participate in the evaluation. Both types exist in kindergartens.
The performance of active monologue is that teachers do not give children the opportunity to participate in evaluation. On the one hand, the status of children as the subject of evaluation has not been taken seriously. The Convention on the Rights of the Child puts forward that children have four basic rights: the right to survival, the right to development, the right to protection and the right to participation. Children’s participation in evaluation is an important manifestation of their right to participate. Teachers "should ensure that children who can form their own opinions have the right to express their opinions freely on all matters affecting children, and give due attention to children’s opinions according to their age and maturity". However, in the real situation, children are often regarded as incapable of participating in the evaluation because of their young age and low cognitive level, and it is difficult to express their opinions and suggestions in related matters. For example, in many kindergartens, children’s opinions are rarely sought for the setting and adjustment of class areas, the content and trend of theme activities, etc.
On the other hand, children are often regarded as objects in the evaluation, and there are few opportunities to express the experience, interests, needs, difficulties and opportunities behind the behavior. For example, some teachers often interpret children’s behavior from a single adult perspective, but rarely go deep into children’s "why the apple is painted black" and "why the snail is painted without a head". Children are deprived of such words in the evaluation process, which actually makes the education process become a children’s performance under the guidance of teachers, and it is difficult for children to have the opportunity to discover and develop themselves through education.
The performance of passive monologue is that in the evaluation of children, managers usually play the role of bystanders rather than participants, only playing the role of supervision rather than leadership, and the evaluation of children has become a task that teachers need to undertake independently. Some managers stipulate that teachers should complete several observation records or learning stories every week and make a growth record book for each child every semester as one of the requirements for evaluating teachers’ work. In addition, they seldom participate in the evaluation of kindergarten curriculum implementation effect as evaluation subjects, and rarely provide support and feedback for teachers’ evaluation work.
However, how to coordinate teachers’ time for observation, evaluation and other educational activities? How to make a systematic and scientific evaluation plan effectively? How to use the evaluation results to adjust and optimize the whole kindergarten curriculum plan, and effectively promote the learning and development of every child? The solution of this series of problems can not be achieved only by the strength of teachers, but must be led and planned by managers.
Monologue evaluation is related to external management and self-accomplishment.
The phenomenon of teachers’ monologues in children’s evaluation has both external and internal reasons.
The external reasons are mainly reflected in the inadequate overall evaluation system and concept construction of kindergartens. On the one hand, although many kindergartens emphasize evaluation, most kindergartens don’t really pay attention to evaluation. For example, kindergartens do not leave teachers with special observation and evaluation time, but require teachers to complete the observation and evaluation of young children while organizing activities; In the daily management of kindergartens, special curriculum planning time and teaching and research time are arranged, but few kindergartens will arrange special observation, evaluation and discussion time for children. On the other hand, some managers and teachers only regard observing and evaluating children as the end of education, not the starting point. Some kindergartens still take the spot check of children’s singing, telling stories and doing arithmetic at the end of the semester as an important evaluation, and make a model growth portfolio at the end of the semester as an important form to observe and evaluate children.
The internal reason is that teachers’ evaluation literacy needs to be improved. Evaluation literacy is an indispensable part of teachers’ professional ability, which requires teachers to have ideas, knowledge and skills in the field of evaluation, that is to say, teachers should be able to understand evaluation, clarify achievement expectations, use appropriate evaluation methods, and properly interpret and apply evaluation results. However, the current research shows that the overall evaluation literacy of preschool teachers in China is not high, among which the evaluation attitude is the best, the evaluation skills are the second, and the evaluation knowledge score is the lowest. Therefore, the evaluation knowledge and skills of preschool teachers need to be enriched and improved urgently.
Provide a variety of support for teachers to get out of monologue evaluation
First of all, in the kindergarten management system, special observation and evaluation time and discussion time should be arranged. It is suggested that qualified kindergartens arrange at least half a day for teachers every week, or arrange an hour of special observation time for teachers every day; Arrange a special evaluation and discussion time every week or every two weeks, and the whole park will work together to discuss the level of children’s learning and development, and study their life and psychological world. The role of the director has also changed from supervision and evaluation to leadership evaluation.
Secondly, in the examination of kindergarten teachers’ qualification certificate and the recruitment examination of new teachers in various places, the content of children’s observation and evaluation ability should be increased, forcing teachers’ training units to pay attention to strengthening the ability of cultivating students to observe and evaluate children. Although "Professional Standards for Kindergarten Teachers (Trial)" has made it clear that observing and evaluating children’s ability is the professional ability of kindergarten teachers, in the curriculum system of many kindergarten teachers’ teacher training units, relevant courses are still missing or the teaching quality of the courses is not high. If the content of children’s observation and evaluation ability is added to various exams in the future, then the teacher training unit will pay attention to relevant courses and provide students with systematic knowledge learning and ability training.
Secondly, it is expected that the researchers of early childhood education can develop a new model that is in line with China’s national conditions and is consistent with the "3-mdash; The computer software or mobile APP for the evaluation of children’s learning and development corresponding to the Guide to Learning and Development for 6-year-olds supports teachers to evaluate effectively and reasonably. With the help of children’s observation and evaluation software system, teachers can manage observation and evaluation data, understand the evaluated and unevaluated projects, automatically draw the development status of individual children in all aspects, and draw the development status of some aspects of the whole class, which provides convenient support for teachers to understand individual children and the whole class, and also provides the possibility for teachers to design suitable courses.
Finally, teachers should build a new equal relationship between teachers and children, and respect and attach importance to children’s evaluation rights. In the new era, with the increase of information acquisition channels, children know more knowledge than teachers in some aspects at some time, and teachers can no longer stick to their authoritative position as knowledge imparting, nor can they despise children’s ability. Facts show that young children are fully capable of participating in the decision-making of matters related to them. For example, some children hope that kindergartens can also have children’s parking lots, so they design a parking lot plan, submit it to the director, and get the director’s permission to open a children’s parking lot in kindergartens.
It can be seen that teachers should change their concepts, respect children’s right to participate and evaluate, believe that children have the ability to make evaluations, and support children to continuously improve their evaluation ability.
(Author: Zeng Xiaoying, former Jinxia Unit: School of Education Science, Nanjing Normal University)