[center]Supervision and Evaluation Role in Higher Education Effectiveness[/center]
Seyyed Ahmad Hashemi
Department of Education, Lamerd Branch, Islamic Azad University, Lamerd, Iran
Email: hmd_hashemi@yahoo.com
Abstract
Educational supervision and evaluation is a mechanism which seeks to improve and correct learning process in all aspects and will lay the foundation for continuous improvement in education quality. The nature of supervision and evaluation is related to all the factors and individuals involved in educational system and deals with the supervision of physical situations and the improvement of contents, methods, etc. Therefore, developing the view of effective use of all factors in appropriate evaluation in higher educational system leads to long-term achievement and will gradually create revolution in higher education. This demands applying a correction, supervision, and evaluation process. In this literature, with regard to the importance of supervision and evaluation and its effects on education and educational supervision balance, we seek the role of supervision and evaluation and its effectiveness on higher education using an analytical and descriptive method.
Keyword: Supervision, evaluation, higher education, effectiveness
1. Introduction
Humans are generally going through the process of choosing and selecting in their daily life using their logic and experience, and this process is done with some evaluations. Therefore, what we are discussing here is the scientific and special evaluation that is based on logical principles with defendable and authentic results and can be scientifically planned to improve tasks and aims.
Educational evaluation as a instructional leader is an important mechanism that leads to developing proficiency and effectiveness in the quality of education. Thus, knowing the concept of evaluation and its paradigms and principles is essential to educational implementations. The reason is that the improvement, revolution and development of the quality for society and institutions should be established within the educational system and its basis be transferred from educational system into society and institutions (Soltani, 2004, page 9).
In fact, there have been some recent developments in evaluation and its application in all aspects of social life and the evaluation of educational quality is known as a special field in higher education and shows that favorable results can be achieved by administration and educational policy-making and decision-making. It is obvious that there is no consensus in the definition and the aim of evaluation. In line with the definition of evaluation, it can be said that the premier and basic aim of evaluation is related to the judgment of the value and evaluated phenomenon. This definition can be conceptualized as the evaluation of competence and valuation. But the distinction, in this regard, is between the aims and the roles of evaluation (Mahdavi et al., 2009, pages 11&12).
Nowadays, Quality is one of the significant components in providing goods and services for institutions to remain in competition with them, so is for the education, which gets special priority. Educating qualitative and developed individuals in all aspects in a group can lead to the educational system that has tendency toward giving qualitative qualities. In this regard, a lot of mechanisms can play roles in improvement of educational quality and appropriate evaluation in higher education. Therefore, with regard to the importance of supervision and evaluation, we discuss the aspects of supervision and evaluation and its effects on higher education.
2. Discussion
Importance of Educational Supervision and Evaluation
The term Supervisionis derived from Latin and consists of super- (over) and –vision (sight), which refers to someone who is in charge of an activity or a person and makes sure that things are done in a correct way. Supervising and giving educational guiding refer to all the efforts of chosen authorities to lay the groundwork for leading teachers and other staffs toward correcting and improving teaching which consist of professional appraisal and development of selecting and revising educational aims and instruments, teaching methods and evaluation. Educational supervision and guiding is a systematic and comprehensive program for correcting and developing all significant educational aspects which includes environment and learning situations (Soltani, 2004, page 1).
Educational supervision and evaluation is not a short-term process. It requires constant consideration which leads to desired and favorable results. Consequently, this process of educational provision leads to learning, particularly in higher education. Quality administration in higher education is a fundamental discussion and it is constantly dealt with in higher educational institutions in most societies. Quality has different meanings for various individuals who desire qualitative outputs and quality evaluation methods.
Quoted from Pazargadi, Harvey & Green (1993) explain the quality as a partial concept. Quality is a partial concept for applying this term and within the situation itoccurs and has different meaning to other individuals; it has different meaning in practice as well.Harvey & Green, quoted from Pazargadi, found the relationship between quality and several understandings on quality in higher education-outstanding quality (related to superiority of elitism), quality as substitution (improving quality and improving students’ progress by developing new knowledge). Each of these understandings is related to methods and approaches used forgetting favorable outputs (Pazargadi, 2008).
Education is an essential element of educational quality and learning in higher education. Well-planned evaluation, particularly in education, fulfills expectation, and provide chances for students to show their self-control to describe and apply them to receiving and giving feedback in educational environment. Education is an integral part of educational activities that has three aims as follows:
-Creating effective approaches for learning and appraisals.
-Precise and correct measurement of expected outputs from learning.
-Defining, evaluating and rating according to scientific standards.
Educational evaluation role
It is often given less validity to the connection between evaluation activities and learners’ quality; However, evaluation condition and temporary evaluation standards and criteria directly help students in their education and indirectly increase their education quality.
Aims of evaluation and supervision
Defining the aims of evaluation, House, quoted from Mohamadi (2009), believes that evaluation is a democratic and logical development which is based on thoughts. Quoted from Mohammadi, Mark Henry points out to four major aims of evaluation as follows:
1. Evaluating competence and value
2. Revision
3. Improving programs and institutions
4. Developing knowledge and value
In this regard, favorable condition (aims and standards) has been taken into consideration, recognized the inconsistences and found a way to solve it, because all the deviations and shortcomings are considered as defectives and problems and consequently, favorable results as outputs and consequences will not bear fruits (Mohammadi et al., 2009).
Planning and evaluation in higher education is one of the functional aspects of university administration, and for reaching to the aims of this system, education function must be prior to other university’s functions. University, after education system, gets into second place in terms of importance and it is the most fundamental place that has the potential to flourish the spirit of ingenuity, innovation, self-esteem, and self-confidence in young generation. University is one of the most valuable resources that a society needs to be prospered. Nowadays, universities are in the highest levels of expertise in terms of knowledge and skill and receive high credibility. They are also known as the factors of social change. Therefore, they have received more attention regarding function, general condition and educational quality than other systems in other societies. The concept of education quality has always been field-oriented. Hence, current belief about quality in higher education is focused on environment.
On the importance of giving attention to educational function in qualitative system of higher education, Yonuskuseh defines fundamental function of universities as follow:
1. Producing knowledge (Reserching aspect)
2. Transferring knowledge (educational aspect)
3. Disseminating knowledge (Ejtehadi, 1999, page 38)
Obviously, each of the mentioned aspects is important and lack of concern to each one of them will bring damage to the development quality of higher education. For instance, a long-term lack of concern in researching aspect will affect a country’s scientific aspect and gradually turn it into a solely consumer of other countries knowledge. On the contrary, giving emphasis to the development factors of educational functions of faculty members can grow and nourish inefficient and unproductive human sources. Currently, investigations show the decrease in the educational quality of faculty members. Therefore, they must think of developing their qualitative and quantitative research which is directly related to the aspect of evaluation (Maroofi et al., 2008).
Quality in higher education
As a result of the enthusiasm shown to the development quality in higher education, some evaluations are necessary in factors presented as follows:
1. Students’ capability in education
2. Students’ active association in different levels
3. Constant evaluation in course aims.
4. Tangible evaluation
Quality is one of the essentials in higher education that has direct crucial effect on a country’s destiny, for quality is identified as proficiency, effectiveness, responsibility, innovation power, and educational condition. In critics’ perspective, higher education has entered a new stage in which competition and quality are its key factors. One of the challenges facing universities is the concept of quality and the expectations participant groups have for their guarantee and assurance (Gritz, 1999).
Improvement and development are emphasized in quality assurance, supervision and evaluation more than any other aspects. Self-administration and self-setting are signs of quality; A phenomenon which is the result of its internal connection and dynamism of system component. Bazargan (1996) believes that quality assurance in higher education is in accordance with all the activities done to evaluation in international and Iran’s level. This institution considers quality as a scale for reconciling systems in the status quo in higher educationwith pre-designated standards.
In fact, universities are major producers of human sources and the only supporter of the frameworks that can guarantee the needs for economic development in a society and lay the groundwork for a full-scale development. Defining effective strategy for supervision and evaluation in higher education is based on the viewpoint and theory we expect from these components mentioned below:
1. Knowledge
2. Teachers
3. Ubiquity
4. Higher educational institutions
Quality and evaluation systems in higher education adopt their criteria from these components as well as clear understanding of higher education and its components.
Supervision role in instruments and methods of implementing program
We have become familiar with the role of evaluation as a supervisor on the aims and programs of education. Methods and evaluations in education provide teachers and plan-makers with the information to take an effective decision for teaching methods and instruments. For example, a teacher tries to find out answers to some questions such as which class must he put the student in? What sort of education and instruments does he/she need? Teachers seek to find a way to diagnose causes and problems and solve them afterwards (Nozari, 1996).
Quoted from Seif (2009), Poffam believes that when a teacher affects on education and supervision in learning, then they first prepare their educational aims using their curriculum and fulfill their educational program. Therefore, they begin evaluating the aims. When evaluation affects on education, teachers again provide their educational aims using their curriculum. The next step is that they provide evaluation instrument based on their aims and finally, they carry out their educational program.
Supervision and evaluation aspects
Focused evaluation on leadership consists of streams of thoughts, planning, organization, and evaluation. Thinking and planning are official tasks. Organizing is program’stask and evaluation is education’s task. The nature of these supervising tasks interconnects with official and educational areas. Making connection between these areas is supervisors’ special task in order to emphasize on conceptualization, planning, organizing and evaluating programs.
Harris considers two kinds of evaluations in respect to planning behaviors. An evaluation which continues current activities and educational level, supports minor changes, performs tasks routinely, and resists against any kind of pressures. Here are some examples of evaluation responsibilities:
-Performing necessary rules
-Valuating courses’ contents
-Keeping the ratio of each class number
-Inspectors’ regulatory controlling
-Ultimate edition of lesson guides.
Dynamic evaluation, on the other hand, helps start new activities that bring changes to the planned program with emphasis on changing conventional traditions.
-Planning staff development
-Teachers’ association in research
-Launching pilot programs
-Reviewing the philosophy of a region’s education
-Evaluating various media
-Introducing new teaching methods
Choosing ideal balance between stabilizing activities in the status quo and those activities that are toward changing is of supervisors’ responsibility (Translator, Behrang, 2001)
Types of evaluation
To evaluate the educational effectiveness, we need other items such as program evaluation, data evaluation and internal processing.
Program evaluation
Program evaluation as a systematic function has different complexities such as data collection, observation, and analysis. This method signifies regular function in respect to the evaluation program quality and analyzed by one or more components.Evaluation is an instrument to a good judgment in quantitative and qualitative measurement and it is considered a valid basis. Evaluation helps draw more results from data and processing function.
Field evaluation: This evaluation is used to identify aims, desires, and requirements in an educational system.
Data evaluation: this evaluation is used to identify decisions, as well as analyzing the quality of available sources, various strategies implemented, and best potentials that can provide facilities.
Processing evaluation: this evaluation is used to define and analyze administrative decisions and ways to put them into practice. Quality is the basis of evaluation paradigms in educational aspects applied to the context of higher education as a system (Anvari, Rostami, 2002).
Measurement can be easily analyzed and repeated; however, the data can be carried out once and repeatingtheevaluation will consume excessive amount of time. Education must be meticulously analyzed to find its actual value and the more accurate is the evaluation, the more time and budget will be consumed. By and large, the more the effect of education is, the more significant the education will be.
Internal evaluation: Internal evaluation or self-evaluation is the first level of measuring reliability paradigms. Gulikson (1994), regarding the definition of internal evaluation, believes that “evaluation is done by an educational group or other individuals in a program in internal evaluation.” Quoted from Bob Queen (1994), Arnold Love (1991) described internal evaluation as a scientific research that supports institutional development and planned changes. Nevertheless, the role of internal evaluation is not only analyzing issues and solution-giving, but also correcting mistakes and performing solutions to overcome any weaknesses and shortcomings.
Bazargan (2002) believes that internal evaluation means that system authorities should obtain more knowledge in respect to the aims of the system and the related issues, then evaluate its obtainability in order to make plans for the future of quality improvement. (Bazargan, 2002, page 114).
3. Conclusion
Quality improvement is the major challenge in higher education and universities need technology to gain rapid development. Investigating evaluation system is an effective way for change and development in higher education and the basis of these various observation, evaluation, and valuation in higher education have powerful effect on students learning, experience and behavior.
Learning aim is neglected in current evaluations although some evaluations are done without adequate skill and knowledge in the easiest way. Students, in fact, concentrate on temporary learning and prevent any other kind of learning. Some critics have given more emphasis on more development of evaluation aims. Universities administration should highlight more on the sub-scale development of education quality by discovering current obstacles, if they want to be successful in the face of challenges and problems. Therefore, a revision is required to be given to the qualitative aspects of education such as the association of faculty members in decision-making and educational activities as well as students’ satisfaction rather than emphasizing on quantitative aspects like the number of students attended in a class or the rate of graduation.
Faculty members must constantly upgrade their knowledge and highlight more on students sense of discovery and thinking by using their teaching methods. There are some recommendations with consideration to the role and importance of higher education:
1. With respect to the connection between teachers social popularity and students evaluation, it is suggested that students fields of study must be taken into consideration in order to receive education based on the nature and the features of each field. This way, accurate results will be obtained by students practical evaluation of their teachers.
2. University’s major aims in teaching must be in accordance with research and professional and innovative activities.
3. Faculty members must be active in educational evaluations and identification of premier expectations toward learners’ educational development.
4. Each faculty member must be given a chance to get feedback on their performance in education, teaching and students’ learning development.
5. Each faculty member’s performance is based on ideal criteria that consist of all functional aspects of faculty members and use various functional evaluations.
6. Each faculty member’s performance must be evaluated according to an accurate scheduled program.
7. A comprehensive system of educational evaluation must be established and faculty members should be provided with useful feedbacks on educational process and adequate chance to weigh up their pros and cons.
4. Reference
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كلام اول 
موضوع: مقالات چاپ شده در مجلات خارجي ISC
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تاريخ: 26 بهمن 1392
بازديدها: 2061
