What are the different ways of evaluating your own teaching practice?

“ A good teacher teaches and learns.”



It is essential to continuously monitor, review and renew the methods of teaching in order to ensure the quality of teaching and up levelling the standards of teaching. Evaluating teachers’ own teaching is a way to identify the strong aspects of their practice, as well as their weaknesses which may need to be changed and improved.

Methods to evaluate teaching: 

1.    Self-monitoring:

 

Here the teacher monitors and evaluate her own teaching skills, this is basically done by self-evaluating like a quick recap through whatever she has done in the class. In this the teacher can jot down some points in her planner and say whether she could attain the goals and objectives and also to evaluate the good aspects as well as the draw back of her session.

This is a meaningful source as it will help the teacher to self-monitor her own positive and negative points. In addition to this it will assist in enhancing her lessons as well which in turn can help the students to attain better outcome from the session.
 

2.  Audio and Video recording:

This is an effective method where the teacher can audio or video tape her teaching sessions, which allow her to evaluate as well as investigate on her performance in detail. Moreover these tapes can be reviewed with the help of other colleagues also to assure the areas of improvements.

·       It provides the teacher with clear reflection on what was happening in the class. This is quite essential as it is always easy to observe and correct others mistakes, but its rather difficult to monitor themselves, especially during teaching when the teacher is totally involved and devoted in instructing and explaining to the students where she is completely associated with the students.

·       Video and audio recordings reflect the actual performance of a teacher, but it is meaningless unless it is evaluated within a group. In other words this reflection really helps the teacher if she evaluates her work by showing this tape to her colleagues and get their feedback. This valuable feedback from her colleagues can help her identify the strength and weaknesses in her teaching, as well as provide possible room for improvement.

·       This process should be done regularly for instance one in the beginning of the academic year, next in the middle and at the end. In fact a continuous evaluation of teaching should be done to check the progress and improvement of specially targeted areas. In turn this also helps the teacher to see how much she has progressed and polished her teaching strategies as per the feedback, it is actually an acknowledgment for herself to feel confident on her hard work.

·       Furthermore, keeping a log of video records can help teachers to keep track of their progress and it is also a useful reference material for the new teaching staff to learn from.

 

3.  Students’ feedback on teaching

Students’ perception of learning experience in a class is the best way to gauge the effectiveness of teaching because the main aim of education is to make the students learn and understand. So feedback for the students can directly determine how effective they have learned from the session. At the same time this should be an on going process to assure better quality of teaching.

 

Feedback from the students can be obtained through:
 

a.   Questionnaires: This tool collects responses from a large number of students simultaneously, which provides a comprehensive picture that reflect the opinion of the whole class. Moreover to make it more effective the students should be given the liberty to write the questionnaire without specifying their names which will help them to freely express their thoughts.
 

At the same time the questionnaire must be designed carefully to avoid confusion and negative effect from students.

 

b.   Interviews: Focus- group interviews with students can be conducted by the teacher themselves or an outside person. Here the teacher can set the questions that she needs to get clarification from her students but this should be discussed with the colleagues and the authority before practicing. 

 This is obviously more effective than questionnaire but at the same time limited to a small group which will not reflect the opinion of the whole class.

After attaining the students’ feedback, teacher should explain to the students how effective was their feedback in improving her strategies and also speak to them about the changes that she has made in response to their opinions. This will definitely make the students and the teachers analyse and understand the usefulness of collecting feedback. 
  
 

4.  Feedback from observations by other colleagues and experts: 
    Teachers can invite other colleagues or experts to come and observe their classes thereby giving the feedback and criticisms on their teaching. This is a very effective method to improve the methods of teaching as the colleagues or experts observe and evaluate the teaching and give their valuable suggestions for improvement. Moreover these advices are very effective as they can focus and tell you how the activities could have been better or suggest some useful tips to help the students stay focussed or tell you about your weaknesses and your strengths. In fact these feedback will only help the teacher to polish and improvise her teaching methods.

·       Peer –observation: Teachers can request their colleagues to come and sit in their class and observe how the teaching is done in her class. Later they can sit and discuss their ideas freely and suggest ways of improvement.

·       Observation by senior colleagues: Teachers can invite experienced senior teachers to observe their class. They can often provide useful opinions for effective teaching.