Suchergebnisse

Appraisal is the major performance management tool that is widely used to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of education in different contexts. In the European education environment, it has been recognized that the transition from learning to learning outcomes relies on developing appraisal frameworks that can appraise what a student knows, understands and mainly how to utilize what he has learned, as well as on evaluation frameworks of programs and in general of the educational approach. This paper has two main objectives. Firstly, it critically reviews the extant literature on student/program appraisal of the European education. Secondly, based on that review it presents a common framework for student assessment and program evaluation, which relies on four pedagogical issues: The PRACTICE applied, focusing on the students' knowledge achieved and on the design of the educational approach; the TOOL utilized that concerns the data collection and the data base creation; and the APPROACH in appraising, which includes the analyses performed and the time to materialize them. These three are creating a three-dimensional space, within which any aspect of the fourth issue, the NATURE of both the student assessment and the project evaluation, can take any position in this three-dimensional space.

For an appropriate way to deal with teaching and learning the Science Related Disciplines (SRD) there is an axiomatic need to accept an integrated-holistic approach both in terms of the way we regard them and of how we practice them. As a result of that need, this paper presents a multi-prong proposition to substantiate that teaching and learning of the SRD have recently undergone a paradigm shift from a Relational Literacies approach, based on searching for knowledge, and which in turn has replaced the traditional Independent Disciplines approach, based on transmitting knowledge, towards an integrated-holistic approach, bringing education into the new Integrated Competences paradigm, which is based on formulating knowledge and which should be understood as representing the confrontation of the Science Related Disciplines with the real world and its conditions.

This paper is an attempt to show that in the educational system of the 21st century, four conditions must be met for its successful present and future: an educational philosophy that can provide an operating pedagogical framework to address the issues of educational experience and the appropriate principles and values in teaching and learning; a path to excellence in order to create innovative practices in the teaching and learning environment within which all pedagogical operations can take place; a technology integration instrument with which the fundamental educational needs and their attendant changes can be attained; and a leading in action process, which can allow new concepts and ideas to be able to be realized. But most importantly these requirements force upon the education system the need to work within an educational paradigm which is a susceptible to such necessities.
This paper presents and describes such a paradigm, named SoFIA which seeks to satisfy the conditions mentioned above. It suggests an educational philosophy offering an operating pedagogical framework to address the issues of educational experience and the appropriate principles and values in teaching and learning. The SoFia paradigm defines a path to excellence by creating innovative practices in the teaching and learning environment within which all pedagogical operations can take place. It outlines, moreover, a technology integration instrument with which the fundamental educational needs and their attendant changes can be attained; and a leading in action process whereby new concepts and ideas can be transformed into reality.