Proceedings of the 30th International Academic Conference, Venice

TEACHERS’ ATTITUDE AND BELIEFS TO THE NATURE OF TEACHING AND LEARNING AND RELATIONS BETWEEN THE PRINCIPLES OF STUDENTS’ ASSESSMENTS

IA APTARASHVILI, TAMTA DARSAVELIDZE, NATIA GAPRINDASHVILI, MZIA TSERETELI

Abstract:

Educational paradigm has changed significantly in post-soviet states and in Georgia among others. Attitude to teaching has also changed. Specifically, directive teacher-centered teaching model is replaced with student-centered model. Most of the teachers were trained in this regard. Change of paradigm caused changes in student assessment system respectively. Thereof, teachers’ attitude towards teaching and learning has become the valuable research topic - what teachers’ consider as the main strategies for gaining knowledge, how the knowledge is constructed, how to make student’s experience more effective, etc. It is also interesting what methods do they use for effective teaching during the instructional process and how they assess students’ achievements. The data during research was collected in two directions. On the one hand, teacher’s survey was developed and on the other hand, final works conducted by teachers were analyzed according to their structures and contents. 210 teachers were involved in the research throughout the regions of Georgia. On the basis of the survey the separate aspects of the following process were evaluated: 1. Teacher’s attitude to teaching and learning; 2. What approaches and teaching methods are applied during the instructional process; 3. How student’s knowledge is assessed, what strategies does he/she deem effective. While evaluating final works the following key criteria had been focused on: what kind of tasks do teachers use generally - complex assignments, where students need to integrate different skills or isolated set of separate tasks, which basically grounds on recognizing and memorizing the facts. Research revealed the following tendencies: The part of teachers considers that gaining knowledge generally takes place during the instructional process (47.4% of respondents), the other part thinks that independent work is crucial (52.6%). Part of teachers (30%) deems that teacher’s function is to simply provide information and facts to students; Teachers discuss student’s individual answers, retelling the lesson (very important 57.4%) and oral presentations (68.1%) as the key assessment methods of students at the lesson; On the other hand, greater part of teachers uses isolated set of tasks to assess declarative knowledge for the final works. We also applied cross tabulation analysis according to teachers’ attitudes and types of final work tasks used by them. Discussing and sharing the results of the survey is interesting for professionals working in the field and for authors of the studies, to outline the advantages and disadvantages, get feedback and outline the prospects for further research.

Keywords: Attitudes, Assessment, Education, Learning, Teaching, Teachers' beliefs

DOI: 10.20472/IAC.2017.030.003

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