Managing Teaching Acts.

It was not really addressed in the Kuma chapter, but one of the things I find equally disturbing about evaluating a teacher's set performance are the surveys that students fill out in order to evaluate the teacher's ability in teaching throughout the semester. These such surveys ask irrelevant questions such as "Was the teacher well prepared for this course?" or "My grade will accurately reflect my performance on tests and quizzes given by the teacher." Truthfully, what does this have to do with how the teacher performs? It says nothing, just simply rehashes some idea that perhaps teaching is something that can be calculated mathematically through surveys and number ratings, rather than actual evaluation. Really, these surveys know nothing about the teacher or the course, because they are pieces of paper administered by organizations who have no connection to the teacher or course itself. Shouldn't real teacher evaluation be done by the students and the teachers themselves? It seems like a pressing matter, and something that is falling in the hands of robotic bureaucracy within the educational system. Those poor saps...

Assessment.

We talked about assessment on Tuesday, so I guess I'm just reiterating what others said before me. In regards to testing in second language learning proficiency, or to native speakers in general, I believe the discourse behind the testing must be relevant to what was being taught previously or learned previously. I think journaling is good, and open ended response questions. Learning to me comes the best with self-reflection and thinking. When conducting speaking proficiency tests, it's so hard to count what is proficient and what isn't proficient. We seem to have a bias for a foreigner when conducting proficiency tests on those for which English is not a "first" language. For example, my English is just as bad as the guy sitting in front of me on the bus, but we have both been born here. Yet when a second language learner is taking a proficiency test, we are likely to use our bias to represent speaking ability. The question is where is the line between what can be judged as proficient and not proficient? Again, it all goes back to the standards of the "standard."