Rethinking Educational Evaluation for Quality Educational Outcomes

Abstract

Educational Evaluation (EE) provides information for action by offering invaluable knowledge in terms of theoretical and practical capabilities and competencies possessed by man for the improvement of individual and society. This study sought to ascertain whether purpose of EE and the rethinking of EE best practices would help to attain quality educational outcomes (graduands). The study was a descriptive survey research carried out in Federal and State Universities in Anambra State. The sample size was 80 lecturers, 3 research questions and 3 null hypotheses guided the study. The instrument for data collection was a 27-item questionnaire developed by the researchers. The instrument was validated and its reliability was computed to be 0.84. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions and z-test statistics in testing the null hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level. The findings, among others, indicated that rethinking of EE best practices would lead to the attainment of quality educational outcomes. Based on the findings, recommendations were made among which was that educational evaluators and lecturers should be motivated and remunerated adequately in order to shun subjective evaluation which they are supposed to be fighting against.

Keywords: Education, Educational evaluation, Educational outcome, Quality outcome

LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research, 9(3), 57-68, 2012