Proceedings of The 5th International Conference on Research in Behavioral and Social Science
Year: 2018
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/5icrbs.2018.12.93
Teachers’ perspectives on the Assessment of Student Engagement – Methods and Tools Applied in Preschool Settings.
Maria Sakellariou , Efthymia Tsiara
ABSTRACT:
This paper explores assessment of student engagement which is considered to be one of the biggest challenges facing the research community and the contemporary teacher. Research on student engagement describes strengths and limitations of different methods for assessing student engagement (i.e. observations). Frustration occurs, however, if teachers use a systematic approach to measure current student engagement, and accordingly set learning goals and design the learning process. Despite the growing research focus on survey measures of student engagement that have been used in prior research, there is a notable gap in teachers’ perceptions on the assessment of student engagement. Through one to one, semi-structured interviews, we investigate 80 Greek teachers’ perspectives on methods and tools applied during regular class instruction in preschool settings. The interviews are developed based on Creswell’s (2008) interview model, with a mixture of open-ended and close-ended questions. Based on qualitative and quantitative data analysis, we present teachers perspectives regarding assessing methods they apply in their class in order to assess preschoolers’ engagement and if they consider significant to use each method. The participants also identify that observations are the most frequently used assessing method, data of which however isn’t systematically used to measure current student engagement and consequently defining academic success.
Keywprds: teachers’ perspectives; semi-structured interviews; assessment of student engagement; assessing methods and tools; qualitative and quantitative data analysis.