The Dilemma of Wu Hongwei's Evaluation of Adult Education Teachers and Its Thinking

Teacher evaluation, also known as "teacher evaluation", generally refers to the activity of judging the actual or potential value of teachers' work, and its purpose is to promote teachers' professional development and improve teaching efficiency. The evaluation of teachers can be based on different standards, such as administrative evaluation, professional evaluation, controlling evaluation, educational evaluation and summative evaluation.

And formative assessment. Questioning the potential value of teacher evaluation is of great significance to our pursuit of improving education, including improving adult education. However, according to the views of some scholars and our personal observation in recent years, we have to think that teacher evaluation has considerable value in theory, but it is difficult to play a good role in practice. It has no good effect because its negative effects are quite obvious. ?

The author is mainly engaged in the research of adult education. After reading some theories of teacher evaluation, I turned my attention to the evaluation of adult education teachers and found that the current situation of teacher evaluation in adult education is even more unsatisfactory. Among all the problems, there are both aspects that are in line with general education and aspects that are very individual. ?

Here, the author will analyze the dilemma of adult education teacher evaluation and put forward his own views. ?

One of the dilemmas: how to establish the guiding ideology of adult education teacher evaluation?

It is generally believed that the purpose of teacher evaluation is to promote teachers' professional development and improve teaching efficiency. But in fact, evaluation activities are almost never satisfactory, which requires us to think about whether we have neglected the characteristics of various forms of education while the superior values point to "promoting teachers' professional development and improving teaching efficiency"; If we evaluate all forms of education, are we unable to realize even the most basic functions? ?

Teacher evaluation in general education is directly related to teachers' professional development. Although little attention was paid to teachers' professional development in previous evaluations, this aspect can never be ignored. Moreover, in view of the disadvantages of simple reward and punishment evaluation in the past, efforts in this regard are gradually strengthened. Judging from the current situation of teacher evaluation, it is really urgent to introduce a developmental teacher evaluation system. ?

This wave is also an impact on the teacher evaluation of adult education. From this, it seems that the following conclusions can be drawn: Adult education should also introduce a developmental teacher evaluation system, so as to effectively overcome the disadvantages of the current teacher evaluation system and improve the quality of education and teaching. However, it seems that we should also consider it from another aspect. ?

First of all, one of the main purposes of adult education is to meet the individual learning needs of adults who have the ability to choose independently (or all kinds of individual needs in the name of groups, no matter how many forms there are, their educational needs are very personalized compared with those of children in basic education). Therefore, when evaluating adult education, we should not be blinded by the slogan that "the status of adult education teachers is both educators and learners", but at least it should be all. ?

Secondly, developmental teacher evaluation is based on teachers' professional development, which is also not applicable to adult education. Adults' learning needs are various, and the accelerated development of society has accelerated the changes of their needs. If teachers are expected to improve themselves while teaching, adult students, the natural subject of adult education, will be disappointed, and then adult education will lose its own value. Adult education emphasizes "people who can be teachers" because adult education can't provide enough time for teachers like basic education. Here, the evaluation is to prove that it is the viewpoint that we must establish only if it does not hinder the realization of educational goals. This situation leads the organizers of adult learning to put the evaluation of adult teachers ahead of teacher education and take it as the standard for hiring teachers. ?

Thirdly, because of the large number of part-time teachers, the mobility of teachers and the initiative of schools, formative assessment is more difficult to use than basic education-from teachers and schools. As far as teachers are concerned, they may not accept the external evaluation of them; For schools, they may not be interested in spending energy to promote the professional development of teachers. ?

Fourthly, students' direct evaluation of teachers leads to the inevitability of teachers' professional development in adult education, which is not as direct as that in general education. In other words, teachers themselves will take the initiative to be responsible for their professional development. ?

Finally, some people think that the evaluation results should not be linked with dismissal, promotion and salary increase. This tendency may not be entirely correct, at least in the field of adult education.

However, the guiding ideology of this evaluation is not without enlightenment to us. Developmental teacher evaluation is based on three theoretical assumptions. First, for teachers, internal motivation has a greater incentive than external pressure; Second, after getting enough information and useful suggestions, teachers may constantly adjust their abilities according to the new situation and reach the expected level. Third, as professional workers, teachers have a high degree of enthusiasm for their careers. These three hypotheses come from motivation theory in management psychology, information feedback principle in system science and scientific investigation results, which provide a scientific theoretical cornerstone for the developmental teacher evaluation system. ?

& ampNbsp-This mechanism is based on self-motivation, implements internal motivation and stimulates teachers' enthusiasm for work, which is also applicable to adult education. The part-time nature of adult teachers determines that they must be able to win in the competition, or they may not be in a hurry to survive, but their internal motivation is inevitably induced by competitive pressure. Making good use of developmental teacher evaluation should achieve good results. ?

& ampNbsp-Teachers will naturally improve their assumptions based on useful information, so that we can achieve a "win-win" between teaching and teachers' professional development by adopting appropriate evaluation methods.

& ampNbsp-As "capable" adult education teachers, their enthusiasm for their careers can be seen from their achievements, which also laid the foundation for us to implement this evaluation.

Dilemma 2: Who should guide the evaluation of adult education teachers?

In other words, is there anyone who can or can evaluate teachers? ?

In the past, the evaluation of teachers' rewards and punishments was guided by managers, mainly by others' evaluation and administrative evaluation, which consumed a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources. In this way, instead of mobilizing teachers' work enthusiasm and helping teachers improve their teaching level, they have increased their complaints and grievances, and even dampened the enthusiasm of some teachers. The main reason is that teachers are resistant to this kind of additional evaluation. Teachers who participate in the evaluation are generally worried that the evaluation results will affect their work and future prospects, and they have fear and hatred for the evaluation. In addition, teacher evaluation with rewards and punishments can't motivate all teachers, moreover, it can only urge competent teachers to reach the standard, but can't motivate them to keep improving. Then, who should be the instructor of teacher evaluation in adult education?

In adult education, it should be said that adult students are "parents". Without their needs, the living space of this form of education will be greatly reduced. At the same time, adult education institutions are institutions that provide such education, and they have the right to hire or dismiss teachers. In this way, adult education teachers are the group with the least "power" status in adult education. But different from general education, a considerable number of adult teachers are part-time. So some people think that these teachers will not accept any "imposed" evaluation. In other words, their greatest "power" is not to accept evaluation. ? However, without their supervision and evaluation, without their coordination and cooperation, adult education will not be able to give full play to its functions. How do we coordinate this contradiction?

First of all, when preparing the evaluation scheme, teachers should participate in the whole preparation process, so that they can understand the significance of evaluation and the basis of evaluation scheme. Try to use explicit evaluation indicators and fully explain them, that is, teacher evaluation must adapt to campus culture and teachers' own culture. Most teachers have received higher education, and they are a group of people with strong self-esteem who are easily persuaded by truth. Once they understand the scientific basis of the evaluation scheme, they can accept it psychologically and actively cooperate with the organization to carry out the evaluation in future actions. ?

Secondly, we can analyze our own characteristics to find solutions. Generally speaking, their cultural level is relatively high, and their internal motivation is stronger than their external motivation. If they understand the meaning of evaluation, their motivation will play a role. In addition, rewarding some advanced teachers will create a soft competitive atmosphere and be a good incentive for many teachers. ?

Dilemma 3: How to coordinate the proportion of various evaluations?

This includes how to treat peer review and student evaluation. Here, I will only elaborate on these issues. ?

(a) more self-control and careful use of peer review?

As mentioned above, teachers are highly educated people. For them, internal motivation is more inspiring than external pressure, and the status of teachers becomes more unstable because of the characteristics of adult education itself and the intensification of competition. These characteristics determine that adult teachers have a stronger sense of autonomous learning and learning enthusiasm. School administrators should fully trust teachers and strive to create an environment conducive to teachers' self-control, such as encouraging and creating conditions for teachers to update their knowledge, better meet students' new needs and solve new social problems, and let teachers learn self-reflection, self-evaluation, self-motivation and self-cognition, find their own shortcomings in various ways, improve their teaching and establish the direction of future efforts. The repeated process of self-evaluation will make teachers develop themselves continuously.

As a supplement to self-evaluation, it is also necessary for schools to introduce teacher peer review mechanism. Generally speaking, peer review not only plays a huge role in the formative evaluation of teachers, but also has great potential value in creating the academic atmosphere and professional development atmosphere of schools. ?

However, when using mutual evaluation, we should not only pay attention to the matters that should be paid attention to in general education, such as using evaluators who are familiar with classroom teaching activities, teaching materials and teachers' requirements as much as possible, because they can best put forward concrete and feasible suggestions for teachers to improve their teaching work. In addition, it should be noted that in general education, in order to make peer review a mere formality, it is necessary to establish a regular mechanism of attending classes and observing. However, the characteristics of adult teachers determine that this is difficult to implement. Therefore, when we use mutual evaluation, we should not only make it possible for other teachers to listen deeply, but also prevent some teachers from making malicious comments because of competition. In the absence of a better way at present, we must be cautious in using peer review. ?

However, this does not mean that there is no room for this method. It is a good choice to invite teachers from other schools or adult education experts from regular universities to participate in the evaluation. ?

(2) About student evaluation?

The first problem before us is how to prevent students from "malicious" evaluation and make strict teachers forced to get lost. Although adult education says that "a good teacher should be responsible for students' interest in learning", we should create conditions for them and urge them to study. However, in adult education, "there are no students who can't teach well, only teachers who can't teach well" is not applicable, whether for learning knowledge or cultivating moral character. ?

Moreover, compared with teenagers, adult students have more "energy"-they are more likely to drive away teachers they don't like. ?

In particular, teachers are not easy to accept students' negative opinions psychologically. For example, they think that students are strict and students may give themselves too low marks. Moreover, adult students are less polite to teachers than teenagers, which is also a factor that cannot be ignored. The resulting disharmony between teachers and students also makes teachers' evaluation of students even more unacceptable.

Therefore, when we use student evaluation, we should not only distinguish between students' "goodwill" evaluation and "malicious" evaluation, but also consider ways and means. For example, we can consider letting schools and relevant parties indirectly convey students' opinions to relevant teachers after widely listening to them, which will make students' opinions more acceptable to teachers.

In short, teachers' evaluation methods should be diversified and flexible. Practice has proved that the combination of peer evaluation, student evaluation and teacher self-evaluation is effective. ?

Dilemma 4: How to create a new evaluation method that really suits the characteristics of adult education?

One of the disadvantages of adult education is that the evaluation method directly follows the general education method. The evaluation method is improper, the evaluation standard is too general, the lectures are few and superficial, the evaluation factors are not closely related to teaching activities, and there are too many subjective factors. Both adult education and general education are the same problems. To improve the quality of teachers' evaluation, we must first have a scientific evaluation scheme. On the basis of fully absorbing many years' experience and lessons of western teacher evaluation, it is an important subject of current educational research to study and develop a set of teacher evaluation scheme that China educators actually need. ?

Most of the existing evaluation theories in the west are aimed at basic education, but some viewpoints in these theories still have some enlightenment to adult education. For example, on the basis of years of practice, Redfern, deputy director general of American School Management Association, put forward several characteristics that a good personnel evaluation scheme should have, especially emphasizing better cooperation between the assessed and the appraiser, promoting better communication between all parties, and the appraiser's insight and skills in evaluation art; Some scholars also put forward to provide adequate training for evaluators; The evaluation process needs to be two-way, not only considering the specific school background, but also related to the individual development stage of the appraisee. ?

Dilemma 5: How to deal with the relationship between teacher evaluation and student quality evaluation?

The evaluation of teachers' work effect is an important part of teachers' evaluation, and the quality of students is a direct reflection of teachers' work effect. However, the development of students is influenced by many factors. From the perspective of testing the effect of education and teaching at a certain stage, there is still a relationship between stock and increment that cannot be ignored. The quality of students' development is not completely controlled by teachers' roles, nor is there a one-to-one correspondence with teachers' educational and teaching behaviors, which is more obvious in adult education: adult students are heterogeneous groups, and the starting point of receiving education is very different. Therefore, in the evaluation of teachers, the results of students' quality evaluation can't replace the evaluation of teachers, let alone judge teachers completely. On the contrary, it may lead teachers' educational and teaching behavior to go astray, hurt some teachers' work enthusiasm and affect the scientific evaluation of teachers.

In this regard, we should pay attention to the following two issues. ? First, handle the contradiction between the comprehensiveness of teaching achievements and the individualization of teachers' work assessment requirements. That is, students' knowledge, skills and attitudes are not easy to decompose; Students' academic performance is closely related to their preparation; The improvement of students' high-level cognitive skills and abilities is often the result of the comprehensive effect of all teaching links in the school, and it is difficult for people to distinguish which specific course has caused this change; Social and environmental factors also play a big role. In this case, it is difficult to test the personal work of teachers. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate teachers' work on the basis of detailed analysis of students' starting level. ?

Second, handle the contradiction between the lag of teaching achievements and the timeliness of teaching feedback information requirements. That is, on the one hand, the effect of teachers' teaching always lags behind the teaching activities; On the other hand, from the requirements of improving teaching, when there are problems in teaching, people always hope that the evaluator can find the problems in the teaching process in time so that teachers can improve teaching in time.

In fact, for adult education, the problems encountered in teacher evaluation are far more than these. For example, how to evaluate the moral education effect of adult teachers is also a difficult problem. This problem is a very thorny issue in general education, but it adds a fundamental obstacle in the field of adult education: can adults receive moral education after all? Is it possible for their moral values to change? If you can accept moral education, do adult teachers have this qualification? If the moral standards of adults cannot be changed, there is no room for discussion. However, compared with foreign moral education, moral education in China is very extensive, including political education, which puts forward an urgent problem for us. ?

However, with the deepening of research, the evaluation of adult education teachers will eventually become a powerful tool to promote the development of adult education. ?

refer to

[1] Chen Yukun: Education Evaluation, People's Education Press, 1999, 1 Edition.

[2] Ying Peichang, et al. A case study of teacher evaluation model-on the disadvantages of traditional teacher evaluation model and the exploration of new model, in "Educational Theory and Practice" No.3, 200 1.

[3] Wang Wenyuan: "Reflections on Teacher Evaluation", in "Primary and Secondary School Management" 1997 No 9?

[4] Jiao Peichan: Reflections on the implementation of the developmental teacher evaluation system, teaching and management, the first 1 1 period, 1999.