Conclusion and implication

Abstract Boyd & Ronald (1989) identify two major goals of teacher evaluation, i.e. assessment of teacher competence and encouragement of teacher professional development. The present study investigates the perception of lower secondary school teachers in Hanoi about the teacher evaluation through the current teaching assessment-criteria, which are used in Hanoi. Survey questionnaires were collected from 30 teachers who are teaching English in lower secondary schools and 10 teachers’ evaluators from different districts in Hanoi. The survey was followed by semi-structured interviews with 7 respondents in an attempt to find out their thoughts about the current teaching assessment criteria in terms of their objectivity, practicality and assessibility. With regard to the role of teaching evaluation, the teaching assessment criteria make a good contribution to the effectiveness of teaching English at schools in Hanoi. However, more detailed indicators of the assessment sheet should be designed and the peculiarities of the subject should be concerned to make the teaching assessment more effective. Part A. Introduction Background In Vietnam, English is now most widely taught throughout the country, and it is more popular in big cities such as Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh city. Teachers of English are said to find jobs easier than teachers of other subjects because English is taught systematically at schools from grade 3. However, it is revealed that after ten years learning English at schools and even after finishing the university, our students cannot be self- confident enough to communicate with foreigners or to apply for a job that must deal with foreigners without studying any further English courses. Therefore, the issue of quality in English language teaching in Vietnam has been a matter of concern. Teaching is often said to be an art rather than a science: hence it is not easy to judge it. However, in all the schools that are said to be famous for their quality, the teaching must be good. Good teaching is the result of good teachers. There are many good teachers of English in Vietnam, that is the undenying fact. Good knowledge of English is the first characteristic of a good English teacher and then the teaching methods. In different grades there are different teaching methods. Many teaching methods and techniques have been applied by the secondary school teachers to develop their students’ learning ability. Unfortunately the results are not very satisfactory for various reasons.Teachers all have known that they must be patient with their students or they must be enthusiatic. However, they will get angry if their students do not finish their homework or cannot answer their questions at the lesson. They also understand that they need to be sensitive to their students through gestures, facial expressions and should not dominate the lesson but they can hardly do it. Theoretically, there are teachers training programmes every year to improve teachers’ knowledge to make their teaching better and better. However, after years of teaching in lower-secondary schools, teachers find themselves unable to use English for day-to-day communication, one of the most important factors in teaching foreign languages. Moreover, some of the teachers cannot answer their students’ questions about the information in the textbook although they all passed the “teaching assessment” every year and many of them get the prize of “Excellent Teachers”. To meet the needs of socio-conomic, scientific and technological development, as well as the intergration of the country, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) requested to reform the teaching curriculum for all national lower and upper secondary schools toward greater emphasis on students ability or it is often called learner-centered teaching. Together with the curriculum changing, the teaching evaluation and teacher assessment have been renovated. Based on the Teaching Evaluation Criteria of the Ministry of Education and Training; Hanoi Department of Education and Training has applied the criteria to evaluate English teaching as well as other subjects. Twenty teaching evaluation criteria in the observation sheet, which is mainly used for assessing teachers after having one or two periods of class observation is so called teacher evaluation anually. However, after 6 years of its application, the evaluation–criteria are somehow causing different oppinions. Theoretically, there have been lots of teaching evaluation models designed by native speakers and other nations around us such as Britain, America or Singapore. Many research in this field have been done by universities or institutes in the world like the Research in Improving Teacher Evaluations with Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation by American Institutes or Guidelines for Evaluating Teaching by the University of Michigan and others. In Vietnam, there is not a standard tool of teaching evaluation system. That explains why teacher evaluation has not achieved success in teaching development and in teacher encouragement. It is known that the MOET has been carrying out the experiment of the teaching evaluation for primary school teachers since 2003 and it is still in the first stage of being applied in the South. For the lower secondary school teachers, the assessment for their teaching depends on their own district. In this situation, the researcher would like to focus on this field to find out a better approach to the evaluation of teachers including its purpose, the rules and regulations that apply, the target group to be evaluated, the domains to be covered, the procedures and methods to be employed, the instruments to be used, the persons to be involved, and the types of reports and feedback to be provided. However, there is no one complete source for information on one’s teaching, and no single technique for gathering it. Moreover, the techniques need to be sensitive to the particular teaching assignment of the instructor being assessed or evaluated, as well as the context in which the teaching takes place. Therefore, the reseacher uses an investigation of teachers teaching English in lower secondary schools in Hanoi for this reseach through questionnaires and interviews as usual. 2. Aims of the study Based on the needs analysis mentioned above, the study is aimed at: Finding out what teachers and teacher evaluators think about the current teacher evaluation basing on the teaching assessment criteria of the observation sheet in terms of their objectivity, practicality and assessibility. Finding out the gaps, if any, between teachers and teacher evaluators’ perceptions of the evaluation criteria. Exploring the extent to which the evaluation criteria encourage teachers’ creativeness in their teaching according to teachers’ perception. 3. Scope of the study Teaching is a complex and personal activity that is best assessed and evaluated using multiple techniques and broadly-based criteria. The study limited to the investigation of teachers and teacher evaluators’ comments on the current criteria for evaluating teachers’ teaching. These teachers and teacher evaluators are working within a district of Hanoi city. The aim of this investigation is to find out space for improvement of the current teaching evaluation criteria. Findings are used to inform concerned administrators of empirical evidence from which their decisions on teaching evaluation can be derived. However, the study was not intended to produce new teaching evaluation criteria. Rather, it is just an attempt to understand the voice of teachers and teacher evaluators – the key consumers of the current teaching evaluation criteria – about the question under investigation. 4. Research method of the study The qualitative approach, which involves survey questionnaires, interviews and document analysis, is employed combined with quantitative one which data analysis will be processed by the level of agreement marked through the 4 options. The subjects of the study are a sample of 30 teachers teaching English and 10 teacher evaluators from 10 Districts working in Education and Training Services in Hanoi. - Document analysis (the teacher evaluation criteria applied in Hanoi) is the first stage of the study. - The survey questionnaire is the second stage and then 5 teachers and 2 teacher evaluators are chosen randomly and voluntarily for semi-structured interviews to provide an insight into the statistical findings made from the questionnaire. 5. Organization of the study Three parts will be presented: Introduction, Development and Conclusion. In the introduction of the study the background of English teaching evaluation is presented and the aims, the scope, the methods and the organization of the study are also mentioned. Part B or the development is the most important one with three chapters which show the nature of teaching, the teaching evaluation and the study. The final part summarizes the findings of the study and some implications for further research are also mentioned. PART B. DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1 - The Nature of Teaching 1. Teaching - a special work Labaree (2000) indicates that teaching is an enormously difficult job that looks easy. Generally speaking, the nature of teaching is the process of transferring knowledge from the teacher-the former to the students-the latter, that makes the process of becoming a teacher not so complicated. It is said that teaching is easy because teachers are the people who read materials first and then repeat the things they have read to their students. However, reality is quite different. Teaching, unlike other professions, requires teachers not only good techniques in teaching but also an emotional relationship with their students; However, there is no guide book for how to accomplish this. Teaching is a dificult practice because students must be willing to learn what the teacher is teaching, and students are only present in the classroom because they are compelled to be there. Like other practitioners in the professions of human improvement, teachers have to work things out on their own, without being able to fall back on standards of acceptable professional practice such as those that guide lawyers, doctors and accountants. Although teachers have many curriculum materials to follow, the curriculum developers and others often have failed to take account of the teachers. The roots of the gap between the reality and the perception of teaching and learning to teach look easy is that teachers put themselves in positions that dismish their own status and power in order to enhance the capacity and independence of their students. In general, teaching is the specialized application of knowledge and skills designed to provide unique service to meet the educational needs of the individual and of society. Teaching is special because teachers must have charisma. Good teachers are not like skilled craftworkers who know exactly what they must do and take pleasure in a job well done but quite separate from their enthusiasm. Teachers are not only skillful workers but emotional to their students as well. Teaching is special because it is very difficult for teachers to make it well but it looks easy for others. Only best teachers can determine the effects of practice in particular context. They know not only what they are doing, but why it is working and why it is likely to work in one kind of environment and not in an other. Although best teachers may have some natural personality characteristics that support their success, they also work very hard at their teaching and continually try to improve. That is really not easy. Therefore, not so as it is understood, teaching is not simply a process of transfering the knowledge from the former to the later. It is a special work that is like an art. The teacher will get success only when he/she acts wonderfully before his/her students. 2. Teaching - a creative work Despite the difficulties inherent in teaching, the profession is generally seen to be relatively easy even among teacher candidates because of many reasons that teachers have spent a great deal of time as students observing teachers practise their trade. The time of observation shows them a lot about what teachers do and the perception of substantive skills and teacher’s knowledge is thoroughly ordinary. A good teacher is the person who makes her/ his business unnecessary that means he/she can make his/her empowering learners learn without the teacher’s help. Teachers have a right to participate in all decisions that affect them or their work. The educational interests of students are best served by teachers who exercise their professional judgement.Teaching, like any forms of creative invention, is situated in person, and professional growth is an intensely private affair. In a landscape without bearing, teachers create and internalize their own maps. Although curriculum designers aim to create particular kinds of learning experiences for students, they can anticipate only partially what particular children will bring to instruction and how easily they will learn. Teachers necessarily select from and adapt materials to suit their own students. . Curriculum materials are seen to be a guide but to be a constraint and control both knowledge and teaching, limiting students’ opportunities to learn. Teachers who invent lessons are said to be creative and imaginative. Their invention will make the lessons more interesting than the textbook itself. Therefore, good teaching involves more than the simple transmission of information and includes motivating students and creating a possitive classroom environment as well. 3. Effective teachers During the past 50 years the debate over effective teaching has moved from a dicussion of technical, classroom skills, or process skills as they have been called, to a focus on skills necessary to make the subject matter understandable to the student. From the Cornell Center for Learning and Teaching, recent work on teacher effectiveness has yielded the following observations which support an integrative model that is both process-and content-based: Teachers promote learning by communicating to their students what is expected and why. Effective teachers not only know the subject matter they intend their students to learn but also know the misconceptions their students bring to the classroom that will interfere with their learning of that subject matter. Besides, effective teachers are clear about what they intend to accomplish through their instruction, and they keep these goals in mind both in designing the instruction and in communicating its purpose to the students. They make certain that their students understand and are satisfied by the reasons given for why they should learn what they are asked to learn. Effective instruction provides students with structured opportunities to exercise and practice independent learning strategies. In addition to that, effective teachers create learning situations in which their students are expected not just to learn facts and solve given problems but to organize information in new ways and formulate problems for themselves. Such learning situations include creative writing opportunities in language arts, problem-formulation activities in mathematics, and independent projects in science, social studies and literature. Moreover, effective teachers should continuously monitor their students’ understanding of presentations and responses to assignments. They routinely provide detailed feedback, but not necessarily in the same way for all students. And they must realize that what is learned is more likely to be remembered and used in the future if it serves students’ purposes beyond meeting school requirements. Although teachers are human, not machines; effective teachers should take time for reflection and self-evaluation, monitor their instruction to make sure that worthwhile content is being taught to all students, and accept responsibilty for guiding student learning and behavior. Effective teacher should talk less and teach more. Students always believe in the teachers who both start and end the class on time. It is important to note that effective teachers should condition students to respond to their arm motions from day one and be specific when giving instructions…short, concise information. Teachers have different perspectives, approaches and objectives to achieve. However effective teachers should not speak in generalities and should never work too long on the problems of one section or one structure. On the other hand, they must know when to practice complete passages vs. practicing “spots” in the reading lesson and be consistent in correcting their students’errors and faults. One more important is that teachers should use the blackboard (whiteboard) to clarify problems. Nowadays, some of the teachers are not used to using blackboard. They prefered modern facilities. Finally, students are very sensitive about criticizing. Therefore, teachers should be careful when giving criticism or praise. Effective teachers know how to criticize and when to do it. They should never criticize or praise the same students. And their students must always believe that each day is new day with them. 4. Effective teaching Effective teaching is the basis of successful learning. Effective teaching identifies and builds on prior knowledge, makes real-life connection, develops deep understanding and monitors and reflects on learning. Although many people believed that good teaching is impossible to define in any general way, many others suggest that certain characteristics are associated with good school teaching as viewed by students, other teachers and administrators. Ebro(1997), presented in a study of winners of the Alumini Distinguished Teaching Award at Ohio State some characteristics of effective teaching which are based on traits of effective teachers such as The teachers got right down to business. They began class promptly and were well organized. They taught at an appropriately fast pace, but stopped regularly to check student comprehension and engagement. They used a variety of instructional strategies rather than lecture alone. They focused on the topic and their instructional objectives and did not get sidetracked. Their explanations were clear. They used humor that was in keeping with their individual styles. They practiced good classroom management techniques, holding the attention and respect of the group. They interacted with sudents by providing immediate answers to questions or comments and corrective feedback when needed. They praised student answers and used probing questions to extend the answers. They provided a warm classroom climate by allowing students to speak freely and by including personal humor or other attempts to relate to students as people. They used nonverbal behavior, such as gestures, walking around, and eye contact, to reinforce their comments. Effective teaching is not the same with all the grades. Effective college teaching that emerge in Joseph Lowman (1996) are the two main dimensions: interllectual excitement which consits of enthusiasm, knowledge, inspiration, humor, interesting view-point, clarity and organization, and interpersonal concern or effective motivation which emerges in concern, caring, availability, friendliness, accesibility, helpfulness, encouragement and challenge. They are also the marks of the effective teacher. Besides, a number of writers Grasha (1996) and Lowman (1996) have observed differences in styles among teachers. They classify them according to a number of dimensions that represent how teachers approach their students, the way in which they think learning takes place, and personal strengths and preferences. Examplary teachers are those who are highly pro