Development of A Self-Assessment Model for A Critically Constructivist Classroom in School: A Promise Envisaged in a Democratic Society

Abstract

The purpose of school education needs to be emphasized in context to the society and culture. It should certainly go beyond developing reading, writing and numeracy skills. This has initiated a paradigm shift in pedagogy; pedagogy of freedom, through the lens of critical constructivism. A self-assessment model is developed to enable the practitioners (1) identify the Quality Criteria for establishing a critically constructivist classroom, (2) nurture their hidden potential to establish a critical constructivist classroom for excellence in learning teaching, (3) address the global challenges of a democratic society through critical evaluation of the identified quality indicators.The model identifies two Quality Criteria for evaluating a critical constructivist classroom; (1) Ethical Learning Environment in Classrooms and (2) Engaging Learning Behaviour in Classrooms.  These are further divided into nine quality indicators. The quality indicators under each of the two Quality Criteria are well defined in terms of quality process, operational definition, relevance, data & information, quality assessment. The action-oriented cycle of assessment takes place via feedback between the process and the result, involving four clearly defined stages, Zero phase, Initial phase, Developing phase and Advanced phase.

The developed self- assessment model gives the schools a new vision to see their efforts on the backdrop of a process orientation.

Keywords: critical constructivism, critical pedagogy, quality indicators, excellence in learning teaching, quality assessment, school education

DOI: 10.7176/JESD/13-17-01

Publication date:September 30^th 2022