An evaluation can involve a judgment about the value of something.
The concept of evaluation refers to the action and consequence of evaluating , a verb whose etymology goes back to the French évaluer and which allows one to indicate, value, establish, appreciate or calculate the importance of a certain thing or matter .
As Maccario expresses it, it is an act where a judgment must be made regarding a set of information and a decision must be made according to the results presented by a student.
For its part, Pila Teleña says that it consists of an operation that is carried out within the educational activity and that its objective is to achieve the continuous improvement of a group of students. Through it, exact information is obtained about the results achieved by that student during a given period, establishing comparisons between the objectives planned at the beginning of the period and those achieved by the student.
The school evaluation
An evaluation can also be understood as an exam proposed in the school environment for the teacher to rate the knowledge , skills and performance of his or her students. For example: "Tomorrow I have a literature evaluation" or "Today I was evaluated in Social Sciences."
At a systematic level, educational evaluation aims to systematically know what achievements were achieved during the school year. These objectives respond to lasting changes in the behavior or knowledge of the subjects.
There are various approaches to carrying out an evaluation, each of them has an objective that needs to be analyzed and responds to it for its realization .
In education and in other areas, an evaluation is an exam.
Different paradigms
It is important to highlight that, at an academic level, there is no single way to carry out an evaluation: everything depends on the purpose pursued and the theoretical foundation in which it is contextualized. Evaluation, in fact, can be extended to institutions, the curriculum , teachers and the entire educational system.
Two evaluation paradigms could be mentioned: the positivist one, which is based on a quantitative perspective, and the alternative one, which disbelieves in the objectivity of the evaluation.
In any case, there are different types of evaluations that go beyond the academic or school environment. Environmental assessment , for example, allows a planner to ensure that the development options they are considering are environmentally appropriate.
Different types of evaluation
The psychopedagogical profile evaluation , for its part, is a procedure that responds to a pre-established scheme and is developed constantly. It provides the possibility of analyzing the level of development of the student and the changes that occur in him from education and his interaction with the social environment.
It can also be mentioned quality assessment , a process carried out by a company or organization to supervise quality control activities.
A context assessment can be carried out: where the objectives and the means to achieve them are determined. What was expected is studied comparatively with what has been achieved.
Study of needs and processes
An assessment of the needs used in the project involves an analysis of the resources, means and their implementation.
The evaluation of the process is what focuses on the results obtained, based on the methods used and the progression curve where difficulties, decisions and objectives are unified.
In order to analyze an evaluation, whether of learning, production or whatever, it is necessary to carry out several modes of analysis to know whether the decisions made regarding planning (programs, implementation and controls) are correct).