Abstract:
Quest for quality in education has been a concern with policy makers, teachers, parents and learners for a long time. This quest is reflected in the various Educational Reforms, School Effectiveness Programs and endeavours to measure school effectiveness. Internationally some of these programs are PISA, establishing national, state, and district standards; target setting; enhanced programs for the external testing of students' performance; surveys such as NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) and TIMSS (Third International Mathematics and Science Study). In India, the attempts are observed in Operation Blackboard, DPEP Programs, the MLL initiative, the SSA etc.. Various initiatives in the same pursuit are more emphasis on school planning and management; and more frequent and thorough inspection.
A common thrust of these attempts is to search for quality in the obvious and the observables, that is, the learning outcomes and achievement of the learners. A view of the inside of the school also needs to be taken as some answers may be found there. Raising the standards of learning in schools is an important step in the quest for quality. The focus needs to be on the processes that occur in the school. Hitherto not much explored, the inside of school is still a „Black Box‟ (William and Black, 1998 ).What are the attributes of the essential teaching learning process that occurs in school and how it can be improved is the concern of the authors. Without entering into the realm of either or of the product versus process perspective, the authors present strategies for enriching the teaching learning process especially from the perspective of assessment.
Description:
School Education in India : Quality Improvement Techniques, Edited by S. Kumar and Sujata Srivastava (New Century, 2010)
