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The research and practice of teacher evaluation literacy has been developed for a period of time in some countries and has a relatively reasonable scale, but the evaluation literacy of teachers in mainland China is not perfect, and the research and practice system is not perfect, so it is urgent to catch up from all aspects. Based on a large number of literature research, teacher evaluation text research, listening to evaluation classes and other educational observations, this paper attempts to construct a framework of teacher evaluation literacy from 7 first-level indicators and 22 second-level indicators of evaluation awareness, evaluation knowledge, evaluation concept, evaluation practice, evaluation interpretation, evaluation reflection, communication and improvement, and evaluation ethics.
The concept of teacher evaluation literacy began in 1991 in Stiggins' article "Evaluation Literacy", and later some foreign scholars defined it from different perspectives. These concepts mainly focus on the structure of teacher evaluation literacy, and some are one-dimensional representations, such as the epistemology of Patelno, Webb, and Popham; Some are two-dimensional, such as Stiggins, Noonan and Renehan, and the integration of knowledge and skills in research centers. The author believes that it can be developed from two perspectives: broad and restrictive. Teacher evaluation literacy in a broad sense includes all evaluation elements and their performance related to teacher evaluation activities. From the perspective of contemporary core literacy, teacher evaluation literacy refers to the mental level that teachers should have to cultivate students' core literacy with the help of evaluation.
Of course, the core issue still has to return to the literacy structure. From the perspective of macro structure, the upper structure of teacher evaluation literacy is evaluation education, and the lower structure is evaluation practice. As the standard structure of teacher evaluation literacy, some researchers in mainland China have proposed a four-dimensional structure of understanding evaluation, implementing evaluation, interpreting and applying evaluation results, and meta-evaluation from the perspective of evaluation genealogy. On the one hand, the sense and trend of educational community require teachers to develop evaluation cognition, change evaluation roles, and carry out more flexible evaluation practices in more diverse and interactive educational relationships. On the other hand, the existing professional standards of teachers in mainland China account for a small proportion of evaluation literacy, the dimensional structure is unreasonable, and there is a lack of operability. The design of teacher evaluation mostly stays at the level of evaluation concepts and evaluation principles, and is biased towards screening evaluation and accountability evaluation due to the influence of high-stakes evaluation culture, which hinders the promotion of developmental evaluation. The superficiality, arbitrariness, blindness, lag, generalization, ineffectiveness and inefficiency of evaluation, as well as the ethical issues of evaluation, affect the high-quality development of education at different levels and to different degrees.
It can be seen that it is imperative to carry out the research and practice of teacher evaluation literacy structure. Based on a large number of literature research, teacher evaluation text research, listening to evaluation classes and other educational observations, this paper attempts to construct a framework of teacher evaluation literacy from 7 first-level indicators and 22 second-level indicators of evaluation awareness, evaluation knowledge, evaluation concept, evaluation practice, evaluation interpretation, evaluation reflection, communication and improvement, and evaluation ethics.
Evaluation consciousness is the first characteristic of teachers' evaluation literacy, which has the characteristics of primitiveness, stress and latent nature, and can be evaluated from four indicators. The first is the sensitivity to the overall evaluation environment. This indicator tends to be evaluation literacy in a broad sense, including the recognition of the government's evaluation policy, the perception of the change in the dominant direction of evaluation, and the feeling of internal and external competition caused by evaluation. From the perspective of evaluation history, the intervention of external evaluation environment on teachers has become an important factor for teachers to adjust their education and teaching behaviors, and the correlation between government and school evaluation and teacher performance is more closely affected, and it is necessary to avoid external evaluation to give inappropriate subjects some consequences based on the results, or give appropriate subjects some inappropriate consequences. The second is the role awareness in the evaluation. Characters are divided into two categories: passive, mechanical goalists and active, agile goal companions. The former is manifested in accordance with the established plan of the region and the school, step by step, focusing on the results, and strengthening the process, which is common in traditional evaluation behaviors. The latter is manifested in a strong sense of substitution in the evaluation role, focusing on process evaluation, not sticking to traditional evaluation methods, and having the potential for evaluation innovation. The third is to evaluate the sense of community. Traditional evaluation is teacher-led to determine evaluation standards and methods. Modern evaluation advocates multi-subject evaluation, that is, the establishment of an evaluation community, which includes all education stakeholders, and discusses evaluation standards and methods, as well as the evaluation responsibilities of each department. Fourth, the application awareness of evaluation in educational life. Educational observation and investigation found that teachers who are good at using appropriate evaluation theories, evaluation methods, and feedback methods in education and teaching have better results in the transformation from experience-based teachers to expert teachers.
Evaluation knowledge is a common element in the evaluation literacy structure of teachers at home and abroad, and it is the underlying structure of literacy, which generally includes two aspects. The first is the conceptual and technical knowledge of evaluation. Foreign teacher evaluation knowledge initially emphasized the knowledge and skills of educational measurement to adapt to standardized tests. With the increasing abundance of evaluation theories, tools and methods, teachers should understand the principle and functional knowledge of evaluation on the one hand, and learn to use multi-functional and diversified evaluation tools. On the other hand, it is necessary to learn common evaluation statistics knowledge, and master the general principles, requirements, and procedures of evaluation tool development. In contrast, the professional standards for teachers in the United States describe the knowledge of evaluation in more detail, involving the purpose, type, function, method, tool, object, feedback, timing, environment layout and many other aspects of evaluation. The second is the knowledge of evaluation criteria. Student evaluation based on core literacy requires teachers to have both corresponding core literacy and the literacy to cultivate these core literacy. Therefore, it is particularly important to study the course standards, especially the academic requirements, academic quality standards, and corresponding evaluation cases, to improve the evaluation literacy of teachers. The study showed that compared with novice teachers, "expert teachers have a better knowledge structure for evaluation" and are "better able to organize the various available knowledge for evaluation and teaching".
The evaluation concept determines the evaluation behavior to a certain extent, which is the center of teachers' evaluation literacy, and the evaluation concept at the purpose level, the concept level and the functional level have a more obvious impact on the evaluation behavior. First, at the goal level, there have always been two different orientations: evaluation that promotes learning (evaluation for improvement) and evaluation for learning (evaluation for accountability). The former advocates promoting teaching and learning through evaluation, which has become a consensus; The latter has become the focus of reflection, mainly at the level of criticism of the overemphasis on staged, summative qualitative evaluation. The second is the conceptual level, which is manifested in the teacher's own world view, outlook on life, values, and evaluation outlook under the influence of education outlook and student outlook, emphasizing ideological correctness and literacy orientation, coordinating the empirical evaluation outlook and scientific evaluation outlook, and avoiding utilitarian tendencies; It is manifested in evidence orientation and emotional intervention, emphasizing the rigidity of evidence and awakening the flexibility of evaluation, that is, emotional elements. Third, at the functional level, there is no superiority or inferiority in screening, selection, diagnosis, feedback, motivation, regulation, and promotion of teaching and learning, but it is necessary to deal with the proportion of each in different evaluation situations, and give full play to the "mirror" function of evaluation rather than "identification".
Evaluation practice is the ability level of teachers to use evaluation knowledge and tools to transform evaluation concepts into evaluation behaviors and the quality of growth and development of the evaluated person in the context of education and teaching. It plays a pillar role in teacher evaluation literacy, which can be dissected from six key indicators.
The first is the ability to grasp, understand and adjust the overall evaluation environment and the local evaluation environment. Evaluation practice always occurs in the process of education and teaching, and good evaluation behavior is a reasonable choice made on the basis of accurate grasp of the complex and dynamic evaluation environment, based on correct and advanced evaluation concepts, including coordinating external evaluation and endogenous developmental evaluation, balancing instrumental rationality and value rationality, and maintaining the tension and openness of evaluation in a closed evaluation structure. This requires teachers to have a clear understanding of the social relationships involved in evaluation and to make decisions that are in line with the nature of education. On the contrary, "if we do not try to understand the teacher evaluation system that stems from socio-cultural influences, then from a practical point of view, a large amount of investment in teacher evaluation is wasteful, ineffective, and will also lead to the marginalization of the value of teacher evaluation".
The second is the transformation validity of evaluation concepts, the validity of evaluation tools, and the output validity of evaluation feedback. The degree of integration of evaluation concept and evaluation practice directly affects the validity of evaluation. At present, it is common for the concept of evaluation to be talked about in teaching design and shelved in teaching practice. In different evaluation stages and timings, such as immediate evaluation, phased evaluation, summative evaluation, and evaluation feedback, it is necessary to choose different evaluation tools, such as real-life situation-based performance evaluation, process-based portfolio evaluation, evidence-based evaluation tools, and face-to-face evaluation tools. The selection of evaluation tools should follow the basic principles of concise and appropriate, scientific design dimensions and rubrics, and the combination of selection and creation. Of course, it is also necessary to use evaluation technology to deal with complex and diverse evaluation information.
The third is the selection and validity of different functional value evaluation methods. Screening evaluation, diagnostic evaluation, guiding and motivational evaluation, performance evaluation, evidence evaluation, value-added evaluation, consultative evaluation, comprehensive evaluation and other functional values of evaluation are applicable to different teaching time and space. Dealing with the appropriateness of the evaluation can enhance the validity of the evaluation.
Fourth, the selection of different evaluation types and their validity. There are many different types of reviews. Immediate evaluation is mainly oral evaluation and body language evaluation, and screening and selective evaluation are mostly carried out in the form of testing and display, and activity courses are often linked to materialized evaluation. No matter what type of evaluation, it is based on a scientific evaluation rubric and has more evaluation validity.
Fifth, the validity of differentiated evaluation and collective evaluation. The lack of pertinence of the evaluation is mainly manifested in two types of questions: the general comments of nagging, and the amplification of individual or niche questions into collective comments. In the collective teaching mode, the main way to solve this kind of problem is to establish a distribution mechanism of differentiated evaluation and collective evaluation, involving collective strength, temperament and spirit, etc., and it is advisable to use collective evaluation. When it comes to learning habits and styles, life tastes and sexual orientations, it is advisable to use more differentiated evaluations. Not only that, but "looking at the heterogeneity of teacher evaluation literacy is conducive to the development of evaluation in a more effective and fair direction".
Sixth, the level of synergy between evaluation and teaching and learning. In the traditional education system and the division of labor in research, teaching, learning, and evaluation are often separated. Today, the integrated design of teaching, learning and assessment is recognized. On the one hand, strengthen the coordination of scientific education and teaching, student development, and student evaluation; On the other hand, the theoretical support, practical models and specific strategies of the integrated design of teaching, learning and evaluation are carried out, and practical exploration is carried out.
Evaluation explanatory power is a posterior characterization of teachers' evaluation literacy, which can be judged from two aspects. The first is the level of mastery of evaluation criteria. The evaluation interpretation is first based on the evaluation criteria, including the academic quality standards, various scales carried by the evaluation tools, etc. The second is to use the evaluation results to communicate with the evaluation objects and related personnel. "In the framework of the elements of philosophical hermeneutics, the interpretation of teaching evaluation should be based on 'understanding', 'dialogue' as the medium, and 'text' as a tool, so as to reduce teaching evaluation to an educational value judgment activity." Experience shows that the establishment of an evaluation community, the formation of a two-way interaction between evidentiary evaluation data and motivational evaluation language, improve the accuracy of prescribing the right medicine, and easily form a benign communication field.
Evaluation, reflection, communication and improvement belong to the later evaluation behaviors, which are the key qualities to improve teachers' meta-evaluation ability, which includes three aspects. The first is the reflection on external evaluation, school evaluation, and self-evaluation practice. The external evaluation comes from the government, society, and third-party professional institutions, which are respectively manifested in reflection on evaluation policies, listening to the voice of society, and professional-based deliberation. School evaluation is positively correlated with teacher performance, and the intervention on teacher evaluation is direct and has greater effect. Teachers' reflection on their own evaluation practice can be carried out through evaluation review, benchmarking from the perspective of consistency of teaching, learning and evaluation, objectively treating wrong evaluations and misevaluations in evaluation practice, and at the same time paying attention to and summarizing the evaluation law of "unintentional insertion of willows and willows". The second is to carry out evaluation exchanges between different subjects. Communicate with students, colleagues, parents, school leaders, evaluation experts and other different subjects on the whole process of teacher evaluation, and listen to opinions and suggestions extensively. The third is the improvement of evaluation on the basis of reflection. Evaluation improvement involves all elements and the whole process of teacher evaluation, and has the characteristics of dynamic and scattered. As far as the general direction of improvement is concerned, the following points are emphasized: more scientific evaluation, less empirical evaluation; Do more guiding evaluations and less negative evaluations; Do more expressive factual evaluations and less qualitative value judgments; Do more evidence-based evaluations and less general evaluations; For the evaluation results, more attribution analysis and cause analysis should be conducted, and less qualitative analysis should be conducted. The concept of evaluation and evaluation practice, immediate evaluation and delayed evaluation, accountability evaluation and developmental evaluation, evaluation in real situations and simulated evaluation, enhance teachers' evaluation self-efficacy and evaluation reflection are combined.
Evaluation ethics emphasizes the ethics and laws and regulations of evaluation, which is an element of teachers' evaluation literacy involving values and industry norms. Teacher evaluation ethics is latent in various behaviors of evaluation, which can be observed from two dimensions: implicit and explicit. The first is the implicit ethics at the level of human development and culture. Comprehensive and individualized development is the basic ethics to be followed in evaluation, and absorbing the excellent traditional Chinese culture and advanced socialist culture is the basic law to be followed in evaluation, and these aspects are often ignored and hidden because of grandeur. The second is the explicit ethics in teachers' evaluation of words and deeds. A teacher's words and deeds, like a stone thrown into the "heart lake" of the person being evaluated, will ripple. If teachers' evaluations are not consistent with their words and deeds, there will be problems with admissibility. Therefore, it is necessary to respect the innate conditions and personality of the adopters in the evaluation of teachers, and consider the feelings and understanding levels, emotional states, and value orientations of the adopters, so as to avoid falling into the whirlpool of evaluation ethics.
Teacher evaluation literacy is a complex system, and strengthening research and practice can promote the scientificity, professionalism, objectivity, timeliness and effectiveness of teacher evaluation. The research on teacher evaluation literacy is still in its infancy in mainland China, and the relevant content of teacher professional standards needs to be further improved, and the problems of single research object and in-depth exploration of influencing factors need to be improved. The teacher evaluation literacy system still needs to be repeatedly tested by evaluation practice, and it is hoped that more researchers and practitioners will participate.
This article is from the 5th issue of China Teacher magazine in 2024.
Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences
WeChat editor|leaxyi
Supervisor: Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China Sponsored: Beijing Normal University Publishing: Beijing Normal University Publishing Group Editor: "Chinese Teacher" Editorial Department Submission E-mail: [email protected] Email Subject: Name + Author's Affiliation + Submission Column + Manuscript Title Domestic Unified Serial Number: CN 11-4801/Z International Standard Serial Number: ISSN 1672-2051▌ Cooperative Database