In our master thesis we introduce the perspective teachers of mathematics and music have on the role of standards in planning and executing the learning process. The main purpose of our research is to establish, if teachers use standards while planning their teaching process, and in what way do they use them while planning the assessment process. Assessment is actually a process, in which teachers find out how well students achieve the required standards from the syllabus (Bela knjiga 2011).
In the theoretical part we first define the meaning of the word standard from the point of view of different authors. Next we focus on the use of the word standard in education and introduce its main characteristics and the role standards have in the education system. We also define the concept of knowledge standards in the syllabus and in the legal documents for education, and introduce the distinction between content standard and performance standards. There is also an overview of syllabuses from 1998, 2008 and 2011, some main characteristics of assessment, the meaning and role of descriptive criteria and the importance of fairness in assessment. Furthermore we introduce an analysis of legal documents that describe the connection between assessment and knowledge standards. As an introduction to the empirical part there is an analysis of syllabus for mathematics and music, with the emphasis on the evaluation of knowledge standards. In the empirical part we originate from the hypothesis of the importance of the use of knowledge standards in planning the learning process, especially in planning the assessment process. We wish to establish how well teachers are familiar with standards form the syllabus and how often they use those standards in their teaching process.
Based on our research, we found out that teachers are not completely confident in knowing the concept of knowledge standards and also insufficiently use standards in their planning process. We also found out that teachers rarely use standard in planning the assessment process, which leads us to the conclusion that teacher do not ascribe a very important role to standards in general.
|