evaluation

Knowledge

2022

We explain what an evaluation is, what it is for, its instruments and other characteristics. Also, types of educational evaluation.

There are evaluations in education, work and productive activities.

What is evaluation?

The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy defines evaluation as the "action and effect of evaluating", that is, "estimating, appreciating, pointing out the value of something", and immediately links it with the world of school and education. Probably because our first formal experiences with the evaluation process come from there, from the school and the academy.

Defined in this way, in the abstract, evaluation is the action of judging or measuring a procedure, that is, of indicating how well or how badly it has gone, or how close it was to the objective we had initially set for ourselves.

In the educational field, it has to do with the acquisition of a specific and specific series of knowledge, practices and knowledge, but in other areas it may have to do with the professional performance of a team, with the manufacture of a product or any other measurable, assessable activity.

Any evaluation, therefore, depends to a large extent on the results expected in advance, and on the system used to measure the actual results, in which the criteria used to evaluate must be specified. In other words, any evaluation involves checking the reality against a series of preset criteria.

In general terms, evaluation as a discipline emerged during the nineteenth century, hand in hand with the process of industrialization profound that the West carried out.

It is the result, in some way, of the application of scientific thought and the standardization of the different social processes, especially school training, which brought with it the study of learning (psychology), the design of educational tools and the organization of educational curricula (education).

Generally speaking, the refinement of the methods Evaluation has allowed companies to have a better control of their results in the different areas of their interest. Thus it is possible to feed back the processes with information which, in the long run, serves to make decisions that lead to the improvement of these processes.

Evaluation characteristics

The evaluation is characterized by the following:

  • It consists of the collation of the results obtained in a process (productive, educational or of any other nature) against the initially established results.
  • For this comparison, it uses different tools or procedures of measurement, depending on the nature of the matter, which allow obtaining information regarding the evaluated performance.

In general, it contemplates three fundamental purposes:

  • Collect information regarding the evaluated process.
  • Analyze the information obtained to obtain conclusions.
  • In this way, define the achievements achieved and those not achieved, in order to provide feedback on the process.

What is the evaluation for?

As we have said before, evaluation has the fundamental purpose of submitting a certain process to judgment and evaluation.

This means that you must not only judge whether the initial goals were met, and to what extent, but also obtain information regarding which were the setbacks, which were the unexpected failures, which were predictable and, in general, which were the characteristics of the process. that can later be modified: corrected, improved, rethought, etc. Evaluation is, above all, a mechanism of feedback or feedback.

Evaluation instruments

The different real and concrete tools are called instruments, which allow obtaining information regarding the evaluated process. They can be of different types and nature, such as:

  • Questionnaires
  • Inquiry files.
  • Graphic cards.
  • Personal reflections and / or self-evaluations.
  • Forms.
  • Dynamics of contrast of experiences.
  • External supervision or observation.
  • Peer review.

Types of educational evaluation

Educational evaluation is one that allows information to be gathered about the different elements of the educational process: the students, the study materials, the teacher, the facilities, etc. Especially known (and sometimes feared) are those that evaluate the performance of the student, that is, that allow to judge how much or how well a student has learned a subject and in a given period of time.

This evaluation can be of three types, depending on the evaluative dynamics:

  • Self-evaluation, when the student himself must judge his performance and his acquired knowledge of the subject.
  • Hetero-evaluation, when the judgment regarding the student's learning comes from a third party (commonly the teacher who teaches the subject).
  • Co-evaluation, when the evaluation is reciprocal between two or more students, occupying the place of the evaluated and the evaluator.

Importance of educational evaluation

Educational evaluation is a fundamental tool for the school process, whose proper use provides the necessary information to optimize the process, improving more and more in the training of future generations. In this sense, educational evaluation offers fundamental results in two different areas:

  • The diagnosis or initial, which serves to understand the starting point of the subjects that go through the educational process. This area provides information on the previous educational stage, if any, or on the basic academic level in different stages of civic life.
  • The formative or procedural, which serves to understand how fruitful the educational process was: how suitable are its mechanisms, how convenient its tools and, in conclusion, how we are thinking about education, and therefore, how new ways we can rethink it.
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