Evaluating Student Learning In TCC

Surviving a WASC Accreditation Process

By Linda Braga, Castro Valley, California

Teaching the spiritual practice of T’ai Chi Chih in today’s techno culture requires patience. It also requires skills in how to teach and how to evaluate students’ progress. The end goal is helping all students learn the form and apply it to their lives. The depth of physical and spiritual benefits each student experiences along the way is just one measure of that success.

TCC classes are taught to a wide variety of students. Often classes are held in non-academic settings, such as parks or sports clubs. Evaluation of student progress is done indirectly by the teacher, aware of a student’s strengths, weaknesses and which skills need improvement. Most teachers do not give out report cards or conduct surveys. Most adult students do not expect an evaluation of their skills. But times are changing.

Funding for adult school programs now demands measuring student progress, being accountable, and documenting what teachers are teaching, and how and what students are learning. Many adult schools are now requiring more rigorous goals and objectives, more collection of data about progress, and measurable results of direct instruction.

This year some adult schools in California are going through a lengthy WASC accreditation process so that students may qualify for federal and state grants. This process of evaluation is underway in San Leandro adult school where I teach TCC.

Gathering Data

The process began with a yearlong preparation that included a series of staff meetings and collecting data from our students. In September, we used a generic self–assessment survey created by the district. The teachers viewed it as useless, too vague. We were invited to design a better one. Each teacher created a survey specifically designed for his or her class.

In December, students completed the new survey. Teachers quantified the responses and analyzed the data. They looked for trends for groups of students, areas of weaknesses and strengths, and areas needing more focus in teaching. Staff meetings became frequent, interesting, motivating and even fun.

In early 2015, we looked at how our data fit with the goals and objectives set forth by the district. From that process, we targeted specific teaching strategies that needed to be changed/improved.

Conclusions & Action Plan

After gathering and quantifying the data, teachers formed conclusions about their data. Looking at group data – rather than individual responses – helped teachers to see the bigger picture of how well their teaching strategies were working.

The Action Plan included detailed descriptions of changes to be made to improve teacher effectiveness and student learning. Here was one of my action plans:

The self-assessment asked students to rate themselves as to their current level of skill in TCC: “beginner, intermediate, or advanced.”

Results and Comments: Students rated themselves lower or higher than they actually are. Many thought they were higher because they had taken TCC for a number of years. These levels are useless, unless there are descriptors of each level.

Action Plan: Create a definitive list of sub-skills within each level for “Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced.”

In January 2015, I met with 17 Northern California TCC teachers and presented the three levels, asking them to look at each descriptor. Each descriptor was read aloud and comments/suggestions were made with a good exchange of ideas. We moved toward consensus–building as we worked together. We now have a revised edition of “Levels of TCC” for the NorCal TCC teachers. Teachers working at the college level teaching TCC were thrilled with this collaborative effort to define what skills applied to each level. They said that this was exactly what was needed in their testing and evaluation process.

These levels will serve as a checklist of accomplishments for each TCC student. Practicing at home is an important step in becoming more skilled. Advancement in skills and understanding are now more concrete and well defined, based on specific sub-skills. This is motivating and very helpful to students. They can determine the next step in advancement for themselves – a quality that all good students possess.

This process of accreditation has produced some great changes already. Some benefits include:

• Ongoing teacher collaboration; sharing teaching strategies and techniques that are the most effective.

• Improved use of teaching strategies for presenting and reinforcing learning.

• Continued revision and refinement of surveys to get meaningful data that reveals progress. We will use these during the next session.

• Continued gathering of data using a multiple–choice format and rating scales of 1-5, rather than open-ended questions.

In March, the WASC team arrived and evaluated the adult school programs. The final report will be submitted to the district in June. I look forward to sharing more information with TCC teachers after we analyze all the findings of the evaluation process.