Measuring the teaching effectiveness

Examining and assessing a learner’s performance is something that has been thought of and is being used as essential part of the education system. How efficient and well thought the methods of examination are, is another debate and I would want to save that for some other time. What is of interest here is that the means of assessing a teacher for his / her teaching ability are yet to be employed as a real thing.

We may talk how well read or experienced a teacher is, but we ignore that there’s a thing called “teaching ability” which is different from expertise in a particular field. How well one can teach something has very little to do with what one knows about a subject or how highly qualified s/he is. Disciplines like design, architecture, etc., demand teachers with high “teaching ability” and not solely higher education. Ironically the criteria for selecting teachers avoid the demand completely. Here, teaching is imagined as instructions, which supposedly anyone with a certain amount of knowledge and experience is considered ideal for guidance.

Well, sometimes good teaching is inversely proportional to how accomplished one is.

Of course, this doesn’t hold true for everyone but, the ego that is fuelled by achieving something in life has adverse effects on one’s teaching ability. Those who think very highly of themselves and their knowledge, often refuse to be put under examination. The mere mention of testing their teaching skill puts them off. They believe that one must not dare to inquire them.

Assessment of course effectiveness is highly valuable in the fields such as design and is a potential research topic. Methods of collecting quantitative and qualitative data from the classroom are to be used for such research.

Analysis of this received data will give insights about the effectiveness of the teaching methods and ways to improve if found to be inefficient.