One of the major objectives of science teaching is to inculcate scientific temper and to develop scientific attitude among children. This can be accomplished only when teaching, learning and evaluation in science aim to develop and assess the process skills among children. Mostly science teachers resort to evaluate the achievement of a child in science through certain achievement tests and examinations, and very rarely they make an attempt to assess the process skills. The existing practices of assessment are not encouraging changes in teaching style and learning objectives which are essential for learning with understanding through the use of process skills. It is clear that the present ways of assessing children emphasis testing to recall information and a very little attention is paid to the process based outcomes.
Discussion
| The present project aims to develop a scheme to assess process skills, which, in turn, can be used in the training of teachers. Process skills can be assessed only when children are given an opportunity to exhibit them. The essential aspects to be provided, as a stimulus to make children exhibit their process skills can be objects or materials to investigate or to use, problems to solve, or evidence to examine and discuss.
|
Our main concern is to prepare activities and materials that would help children to manifest their process skills into reality. Of course, all activities may not give an opportunity for all the process skills to be assessed. In practice a teacher has to look across several activities to assess the full range.
Key points
The following points, about what teachers can do to assess process skills, should be kept in mind while designing a scheme for assessment:
- Providing opportunity to use process skills in the exploration of materials and phenomena.
- Providing opportunity for discussion in small groups and as a whole class.
- Listening to their talk and studying their products to find out the processes which have been used in forming their ideas.
- Encouraging critical review of how activities have been carried out.
- Providing access to the techniques needed for advancing skills.
|
Key points
An attempt is made in this project, to prepare a scheme to assess following process skills.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
|
