Teaching Prepared by Caroline W. Ndirangu

Assessment and Evaluation
Read through this passage and note down: why teaching and assessment are 
complementary?
For effective assessment and evaluation of learners, we need to observe the upward, 
downward or steady (constant) trend in their performance.
These are pointers to the behavioural change in the learners. Whatever change is 
evident, will be a guide to what measures should be undertaken or adopted. The 
measures adopted should enhance the teaching/learning process.
The assessment tools used should be able to illustrate the change in the learner. 
This involves the educational measurements, which deals with techniques and 
strategies for evaluating how successful the educational process has been. It pro-
vides a valuable feedback to the educator because it answers the questions:
•  Are we getting the results we are expecting? If the answer is “Yes” then 
the teacher can be pleased with a job well done.
•  If the answer is “No” it means he/she has to find out why and try to 
remedy the situation.
Teaching and measuring are looked upon as complementary activities for both 
the teacher and the learner. No matter how efficient the teacher, how intelligent 

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African Virtual University
   
the learners, how adequate the audio-visual equipment, if no provision is made 
for some evaluation of progress, the teaching effort may be completely invalida-
ted. Too often in schools and colleges, teachers are unwilling to test and evaluate 
because of extra work it presents.
On the other hand, learners are scared of being tested. Some teachers dispense 
with tests as a means of achieving popularity with learners. Often by the end of 
the year, without tests, the teacher and the learners have drifted from one topic 
to another and neither the teacher nor the learners can tell what has been achie-
ved except that one year of classroom activities came to an end To avoid such 
a situation, the relationship between objectives of education, the content and 
techniques used to achieve these objectives and process of evaluating the outcome 
of the educational endeavor should be adopted.
                               
 Course Objective
Evaluation of Course                                                  Content and Techniques
Each of the elements in the triangle influences the other two and is in turn in-
fluenced by them. In any valid teaching/learning situation; these three elements 
must be present. Objectives in education are worthless without the content and 
techniques for achieving them and without methods of determining whether or 
not they have been achieved.
Therefore teaching and measuring are looked upon as complementary activities 
for the teacher and the learner. 

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African Virtual University