Opinions of the Pre-service Teachers Regarding the Educational Measurement and Evaluation Course

Abstract

Teachers use the measurement and the evaluation in the decisions they make about students in the classroom. The measurement and evaluation courses are given in line with this need in the college of education. This study was carried out in order to determine the awareness, self-evaluation and expectations of pre-service teachers studying in the science and the social sciences departments about the educational assessment and evaluation course. For this purpose, three open-ended questions were posed to pre-service teachers using a questionnaire. The phenomenology design was used in the study. After the data were encoded in the computer environment, themes were formed by conducting the content analysis by one of the researchers. Later, a second researcher was given these themes and asked to encode the data under these themes. There was an agreement of 75% for the first question, 89% for the second and 87% for the third question between the two researchers. The themes were finalized by discussing the items for which the agreement was not achieved. The pre-service teachers mostly stated that the educational measurement and evaluation course will be beneficial for them in their professional life in "making objective and qualified exams". While 31% of the pre-service teachers considered themselves as adequate in terms of the qualifications gained in this course, 69% of the pre-service teachers considered themselves as inadequate. When the pre-service teachers were asked about how this lesson should be taught in order to be more beneficial for them in their professional life, they mostly (44%) underlined the need for “practice”. The results reveal that the most of the pre-service teachers do not consider themselves competent in the measurement and evaluation course, and they think that besides the theoretical knowledge, practice should be given more importance in the measurement and evaluation course.