Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation Essay

Abstract CBSE has introduced Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) in standard IX and X from 2009. CCE refers to system of school based evaluation of a student that covers all aspects of a student development. It emphasizes continuity in evaluation and assessment of broad based learning and behavioural outcomes on the other. Effectiveness of CCE depends on teachers positive attitudes towards it. Hence, this paper studies the attitude of social science teachers towards CCE at secondary level in relation to their gender, area and teaching experience. The study was descriptive in nature. An Attitude Scale towards CCE developed by Investigator, having forty items was administered to the respondents to determine the subjects’ attitude towards CCE. All the social science teachers, teaching at secondary level in West District of Sikkim constituted the population of the study. Fifty social science teacher comprising male and female, rural and urban and less than and above eight years o f experience were selected as a sample of the study. Two to four social science teachers were selected at random from the sampled institutions. Mean, Standard Deviation, t-test, Quartile Deviation were applied to measure and compare the attitude of social science teachers towards CCE. The analysis of the data revealed that the majority of the social science teachers possess positive attitude towards CCE. It was found that there was no significant difference in attitude towards CCE between the female and male social science teachers. Teacher working in rural secondary schools were found same attitude towards CCE as compared to the teachers working in urban schools. It uncovered the fact that the teachers having less than eight years of experience are equally committed and possess positive attitude towards CCE as compared to the teachers having more than  eight years of experience. The in- depth qualitative study should be conducted to investigate variable affecting attitude of social science teachers at secondary level. Key words: Attitude, social science teachers, continuous and comprehensive evaluation, secondary level. INTRODUCTION The main aim of education is to bring holistic development in the learner. Through education all individuals can achieve greatness and become responsible and productive citizens. Since time immemorial lots of efforts have been given to impart quality education to the younger generation considering them as nation assets but outcomes were always remain questionable. System gave more impetus for transmitting the information but less importance on understanding the need of learner. System emphasizes more on cognitive development of the learner, but for any student to fulfil his her potential, timely and proper assessment is even more imperative as only after this is done can proper guidance be given on how to move forward, improve, develop different facets of personality, polish rough edges, till the finished product emerges like crystals. Comprehensive, proper and timely assessment is lacking in today’s system which values and indeed glorifies learning by rote. Keeping in view of need of quality education, recently new initiative has been done in the field of evaluation, focussing to decrease the accumulated stress of board exams on the students and to introduce a more uniform and comprehensive pattern in education for the children all over the nation. Concept of Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation is a process of determining the extent to which the objectives are achieved. It is not only concerned with the appraisal of achievement, but also with its improvement. As testing, evaluation is also concerned with identification of learning experiences and educative environment to produce changes in the learner’s behaviour. It involves information gathering, information processing, judgment forming, and decision-making. Effective implementation of Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation is depending on teachers’ attitudes as they are the key person in the transmission and implementation of the system. Teacher is instrumental for better assessment of the students. He is required to have a higher degree of interest to accept the innovation in education because of changing circumstances. A good teacher is expected to be committed to his work and have the ability to take the initiative (Sparks, 1979). The teachers did not know anything about the preparation of the blue print; they were also ignorant about the objectives of unit wise teaching (Tewari 1975) shows their unfavourable attitude towards teaching and evaluation. As Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation is the new initiatives in education substantial majority of the teachers seemed to think that it promoted creativity, analytical ability, regularity and command over the subjects by students, teachers responded positively to the continuous evaluation system (.Rao and Bharathi, 1989). Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation enable teacher and students to make judgments about the work undertaken; to identify their knowledge, attitudes and skills, and to understand the changes that have occurred in these; and to increase their ability to assess their learning and performance. CCE not only helps in awarding grades and certificates but also helps teachers to diagnosis learning difficulty of the learner. Continuous evaluation would help the subject teachers to diagnose the deficiencies in their students so that they could adopt appropriate corrective measures at the appropriate time (Rao, 1982). CCE helps to teacher to ascertain the learning difficulties among the learner but it depends on their ability and attitude to use different types of tools and techniques. (Thangamani, 1989) found the teachers working in Madurai city higher secondary schools positive attitude towards oral examination as a diagnostic device. Continuity of assessment from the first day of school is the prime motive of CCE rather than sole depend on summative evaluation. Conventional evaluation system was emphasized on summative evaluation only. Traditional evaluation system facilitates more rote learning, classify of pupils based on division and marks rather than creativity, social and emotional development. Whereas, CCE (Pareek, P.L. 1986) scheme does not like examination; seek to classify  the pupils into classes or divisions but aims essentially at their all-round improvement or development. Assessment is done from time to time with the aim of discovering the extent of their progress, their strengths and weaknesses and then to take on that basis necessary steps to bring about the desired growth. This scheme promotes healthy student teacher parent relationship by giving them continuous and necessary feedback at frequent intervals to both teachers and parents. People’s attitudes towards new approach have an effect on implementation. It is also valid for new approach of evaluation system i.e., Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation. The quality of education is directly related to quality of evaluation. Teacher is expected to not only to master the subject and various methods of teaching but also to show that he is capable of selecting the various study materials according to the teaching goals and varied group of pupils. He also possesses the potentials to create a learning environment for the students (Vermont and Verschaffel, 2000. The success of a curriculum depends on its transactional strategies and the skills of teachers in reading to students (Pandey, 2000). They have to plan how to arrange remedial teaching for low and slow achievers to bring them on an equal footing with their peers. The teachers are required to use the educational technology to the maximum and continuous and comprehensive evaluation frequently. CCE implies not only a change in evaluation practices in the classroom but also a paradigm shift in the autonomy and responsibility of teachers. Teachers are supposed to update him/ her with the latest knowledge to cope up with the need of the time. Teachers’ lack of sense of responsibility and unfavourable attitude cannot bring any changes in evaluation system which was found (Rao Manjula, 1998; 2001; 2002) that Evaluation practices carried out in schools are still conventional in their nature and purposes. The personal and social qualities are totally ignored due to lack of awareness of what to be evaluated and how to evaluate. Assessment of wrong things or the same range of things too often is carried out. One doesnâ €™t get a fair and realistic picture of what students have actually mastered. (Smita, 2002) CCE demands that the teacher should change her strategies on the basis of the outcomes continuously and tailor them to the needs of individual children. The principal and the teachers should develop an action plan indicating the scheme of evaluation, identifying the task and role of  different activities and their time schedule, mode of implementation and feedback mechanism along with remediation strategies (Rajput and Kumar, 2003). Unfavourable attitude of teachers towards Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation can make the effect of scheme more badly than the conventional evaluation system. (Rao and Rao, 2008) the teachers were found to be recording mechanically by simply putting tick against each student to satisfy the supervising and inspecting authorities. Without the dedication and positive attitude towards the CCE the aim of the scheme can not be accomplished. NEED OF THE STUDY Continuous and comprehensive evaluation necessitates the use of multiple evaluation techniques and tools in addition to certain conventional ones. This is required because different specific areas of pupil growth need different types of evaluation through certain techniques. The teacher has to select the most appropriate technique for a situation and develop the necessary tools for the same, and decide upon the periodicity and timing of evaluation. As a social science teacher, he/she should have Knowledge and ability to construct assessment tools that are criterion based appropriate for assessing the competencies. Social science teacher at secondary level are dealing with the adolescence learner so they are expected to require knowledge, skills of evaluation, commitment, and assistance to provide remedial teaching. Teacher should have favourable attitude to use new innovation in evaluation system. This study therefore seeks to provide some insight into the attitude of social science teachers from some randomly selected secondary and senior secondary schools in West District of Sikkim towards Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation. The study was delimited to West District and only Government schools of Sikkim. Objectives The objectives of the study were: 1. To study the attitude of Secondary Social Science Teachers towards the CCE, 2. To study the difference between male and female Secondary Social Science teachers attitude towards CCE, 3. To study the difference between rural and urban Secondary Social Science teachers attitude towards CCE and 4. To study the difference in teachers attitude towards CCE between the teachers having more than and less than 8 years of teaching experience. Research Questions /Hypothesis The research question and hypotheses were: 1. Whether there is any attitudinal variation among the secondary social science school teachers towards CCE? 2. There exists no significant difference in attitudinal score between male and female teachers towards CCE. 3. There exists no significant difference in attitudinal between urban and rural social science teachers towards CCE 4. There exists no significant difference in attitudinal score between social science teachers having less than and above eight years of experience towards CCE. METHOD The present study was undertaken using the survey method. SAMPLE The investigator selected about 50 secondary social science teachers from the secondary and senior secondary schools of west district, Sikkim on random selection basis as the target group of the study. The distribution of the sample selected for the study were twenty seven female and twenty three male social science teachers of which only twelve were from urban schools and thirty eight were from rural school again from the same sample twenty three teachers were having less than eight years and twenty seven were having above eight years of teaching experience. TOOLS In the study of attitude, the investigator constructed the attitude scale for assessing the attitudes of social science teachers towards CCE at secondary level. There were forty statements in the scale having thirty three positive and seven negative statements. It was constructed in five point scale ranging from Strongly Agree, Agree, Undecided, Disagree and Strongly Disagree. Maximum weightage to each statement was five. So, the maximum score of the scale was 200 and minimum was 40. DATA COLLECTION Researcher personally contacted all the respondents and administered attitude scale to collect the data. Clear instructions were prepared for the respondents. They were requested to go through the general instructions first and then to respond. The respondents were asked to decide about their agreement with the statements and mark the relevant response honestly on the given space. Attitude scale and personal information sheet were distributed to subjects with the request to complete and return it as soon as possible. The measurement of attitudes of these groups and the comparisons therefore were undertaken to find out the differences in the attitude of different groups. The comparison were aimed at locating the differences in the attitude towards CCE affected by the variable a) gender, b) the area of residence rural and urban , and c) teaching experience- less than and more than eight years of teaching experience. STATISTICAL TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURE OF ANALYSIS The investigator used Quartile Deviation to find out the total attitude score of the subjects and t test to make comparisons between the variable like male: female, urban: rural and below eight years: above eight years of teaching experience. Research Question-1 Whether there is any attitudinal variation among the secondary social science school teachers towards CCE? For the analysis of Research Question 1 Investigator categorized the score with quartile deviation. Categorizations are as follows: Score up to 145 = Marginal attitude, 145-159 = moderate attitude and above 159 = highly favourable attitude. Result found that 24% fall under marginal attitude, 52% moderate attitude and 24% highly favourable attitude. Hypothesis-2 There exists no significant difference in attitudinal score between male and female teachers towards CCE. To establish if teachers’ gender has influence  on their attitude towards CCE at secondary level the t-test statistics was utilized to test the hypothesis as shown Table II below. Table 1 show that the calculated t’value 0.62 is less than the critical value 2.01 at 0.05 level of significance. This indicates that the difference in the attitudes of Male and Female Teachers towards CCE is not significant hence Ho is accepted. It revealed that male and female social science teachers are having equally positive attitude towards continuous and comprehensive evaluation. There is no influence of sex on the attitude of social science teachers towards CCE. Hpothesis-3 There exists no significant difference in attitudinal score between urban and rural social science teachers towards CCE. Table 2 shows that the calculated t’value 0.77 is less than the critical value 2.01 at 0.05 alpha level of significance. This indicates that the difference in the attitudes of Urban and Rural Teachers towards CCE is not significant hence Ho is accepted. It revealed that social science teachers from urban schools are having same attitudes towards CCE as rural school social science teachers possess. Further, it can be said that on the basis of location of school attitudes of teachers can not be influence and make differences towards continuous and comprehensive evaluation. Hypothesis-4 There exists no significant difference in attitudinal score between social science teachers having less than and above eight years of experience towards CCE. Table 3: Shows that the calculated t’value 0.63 is less than the critical value 2.01 at 0.05 alpha level of significance. This indicates that the difference in the attitudes of social science teachers having less than and above eight years of teaching experience towards CCE is not significant hence Ho is accepted. It revealed that experience is not the factor to make attitudinal difference towards continuous and comprehensive evaluation but teacher’s enthusiasm, interest may make the difference. Further, it can be said that experienced teachers and fresh teachers are equally capable to make CCE successful and should be given equal responsibility to carry out the task. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS The result of the study revealed that the proportion of Social Science teachers who had scored above 159 out of 200 points was 24%, 145-159 was 52 % and 120-144 was 24%. . This indicates that 24% social science teacher’s attitude were highly favourable attitude, 52% teachers’ moderate positive and 24 % teachers’ marginal positive. Teachers’ attitudes have important implication for effective implementation of CCE in the school. In the area of CCE plenty of researches are not available in general and attitude of secondary social science teachers towards in CCE in particular. Few research like Rao and Bharati (1989) found positive attitude of teachers towards continuous evaluation system. It was observed that majority of teachers seemed to think that it promoted creativity, analytical ability, regularity  and command over the subjects by students. Similarly, in the study of Thangamani (1989) teachers showed positive attitude towards oral examination as a di agnostic device, this also comes under the purview of present CCE but it was not launched at that time. The effectiveness of CCE implementation depends on teachers’ positive attitude and awareness towards it. Rajput and Kumar (2003) also opined the need of orientation for teachers in the conceptual and practical aspects of scheme to give them clear understanding as to how to go about the CCE. Present study reveals that, teachers possess positive attitudes towards CCE. It was found by Rao and Rao (2008) that primary school teachers were not doing continuous assessment systematically, not identifying the learning difficulties and remedial instruction was not provided. It also revealed that teachers were recording against the each student’s performance and activities just to satisfy the supervising and inspecting authority. Such findings about the teachers were probably due to lack of awareness about CCE among the teachers as it was not implemented in all areas. Rao Manjula (2002) also found evaluation practices carried out in schools were still conventional in their nature and purposes in those schools were teachers are not trained in in-service programmes. In concluding, it would seem that positive attitude of social teachers towards Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation was probably due to proper in-service training. In some of the studies it was found that attitude was not positive due to lack of training, awareness and significance about CCE. 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