My journey in the field of education enriched with the experience and knowledge gathered from various global settings, and students and families involved from different socio-economic backgrounds have been a blessing. It has been almost two decades since I have been teaching. My area of teaching includes mostly the elementary and early childhood settings from PreK through 5th grade. Born and raised in Bangladesh, I always have a long desire to go back to Bangladesh and teach in a university setting to empower new student teachers with the knowledge of instructional practices, goals, and objectives. With that in mind, this course is enhancing my knowledge of the importance of authentic program evaluation systems. The content of this course will impact my future goal by supplementing knowledge of data collection and implementation to support program evaluation, driving forces for the evaluation process, who needs to be involved in the process, and other important aspects of program evaluation and support it to meet the goals and objectives. I was able to resonate my hopes with the head start director, Zapata (2018) when she mentioned that her program created a culture of collecting and using data that is embedded into strategic planning, programs goals, and objectives, and how to provide services to the children and their families by using these data.
With all these years of experience in the education field, I have experienced the importance of data collection and making data-driven decisions to meet the needs of the children and their families in respect of academic decisions. Using a systematic process to gather data is essential to evaluate and maintain the quality of a program. In this respect, Ebbeck, Teo, Tan, & Goh, (2014) stated that because the systematic assessment process allows children to make further progress in their learning and development, enables to share this information with all the stakeholders who are involved in child’s life, and enable teachers to evaluate how the curriculum and program are meeting its goals and objectives, teachers should engage in the systematic assessment process.
Some of the questions that I have are; when a certain evaluation process is showing success, does the program still need to change and adhere to a new evaluation system? If so, based on what criteria (s)?
References
Ebbeck, M., Teo, G., Tan, C., & Goh, M. (2014). Relooking Assessment: A Study on Assessing Developmental Learning Outcomes in Toddlers. Early Childhood Education Journal, 42(2), 115–123. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-013-0602-9