A framework for evaluation

It is necessary to be aware of the importance of our decisions as teachers. This is the reason we always need a strategy for making sound decisions that eventually will provide better results for our students.
Since evaluation is a four-step process, which includes identifying purposes, collecting information, interpreting that information and finally reaching a decision, it requires taking a deeper look at what these steps mean, and most of all it requires finding or building the necessary conections among the aspects of classroom-based evaluation so that positive results are drawn.


One of the most important things to take into account at the moment of making a decision is the effect it will have on students' outcome related to language learning, obviously. This implies observing, analyzing and studying the components of evaluation and based on those analysis making a decision. For example, if at the moment when instructional objectives are being assessed students' needs must be taken into account; and if there is a mismatch between these two categories a change must be implemented, so that the purposes of the course match with the students' needs. Another case in which decisions must be made is at the moment of assesing the instructional plans versus instructional objectives; in here, it is necessary to be conscious of what the objective is so that the way it is intended to be attained matches with it... If not, it would be contradictory to -for isntance- teache speaking by means fo writing long paragraphs. Objectives must provide the basis to assess students' acievement, so, in the former example if the objective was related to speaking, then the way to asses those students was related to that skill as well. Decisions are required also when instructional plans are judged against instructional practices; if things are not going as planned the teacher must act immediately . Finally, another component of classroom's assesment is what students can decide or are able to decide at the moment of comparing what they need to the objectives of the course they are taking; all those thoughts will end up in affecting their learning strategies and their study habits.


The strategy for evaluating consists on keep on comparing all the aspects involved in it, plus the input factos that have an effect on students performance. A lot of people base their evaluation practices on comparing just the achievements at the end of the course versus the beginning-of-the-course objectives, but it goes beyond that. Evaluation requeries an on-going analysis of what happens in the classroom, what was planned, and what is being achieved, in this way improvements can be made and, teachers and students can take advantages of the decisions that assesment involves.