Man has gained a lot from education in his/her life, when it comes to education this means we are talking about awareness, knowledge and some experiences.
We do respect education in our lives as it opens up the minds to different prospective that help us to cope up with the continuous changing environment. Education balances between the practices and knowledge, and as we have mentioned before coping up with multiple changes in our lives that have to be handled based on others experience or some level of basic knowledge about different aspects related to the same subject.
We respect education in our lives also because it's considered to the source of communication and sharing knowledge between different members in the same society and other foreign societies as I am one of the believers that man always tend to share his knowledge with other humans so that this knowledge can spread all around and help mankind to stay and continue in this life till the end, education is the channel where man can share and communicate with others to know his habits, costumes, and attitude to help others to understand the way they should communicate accordingly.
Education was always treated as a measure for success for any individual...yes... individuals nowadays can obtain a job according to the type and levels of educations they have received, and this education is usually measured by examinations that translates this concept (education) into meaningful numbers that could be easy to compare with other umbers, so we can say that the education is considered to be the critical success factor for the general success of an individual, where any individual have to acquire it in order to be considered as successful, at the same time examining and exam results could be the key performance indicator that is used to measure the educational level.
Education and the economy have a strong relationship on the other hand on both levels the individual level as well as the society level. For individuals people tend to get high level of education and they spend a lot of money on that in order to get much more money in the future to maintain their livings and their families.
From the society perspective, education normally helps in economy growth, as education will lead to more research and development studies which is essential for new inventions that are important to create new markets globally that depends on the countries goods and services and those new innovations brings more foreign currencies to the economy which will grow up the economy especially in the developing countries that requires foreign currencies to enhance their economic situation. (ref. 1)
There has been many educational techniques since the idea of education arise long time ago, but the most common methodology is called Blooms Taxonomy, which came around back in the 1950s by Benjamin Bloom, who have classified the different objectives of education into about Six taxonomies which are:
1. Knowledge, 2. Comprehension, 3. Application, 4. Analysis, 5. Synthesis, 6. Evaluation
1. Knowledge:
Getting familiar with different terminologies, and basic concepts, where you can call previously learned concepts and definitions. Knowledge stage is a very important objective of education as it will be the solid ground for all the coming phases.
2. Comprehension:
Here we start to make sense of all facts and believes, and start to interpret them and explain how do we feel of what do we understand about any of the principles that we know.
3. Application:
Start to resolve different situations and cases according to the acquired knowledge and principles
5. Synthesis:
Performing and applying new conditions on an existing situation that could change the overall performance of that activity, also synthesis could include the production a project plan for implementing a certain project.
6. Evaluation:
Based on the analysis and trying different alternatives we will reach to setting up an opinion or idea about any matter, we also will be able to judge that idea accordingly, and here where the wisdom comes. (ref. 2)
All the previously mentioned taxonomies are to be performed through certain means, and nowadays technology plays a vital role in education and courses delivery, nobody can deny the role of personal computers and how it's useful for those who study to perform their own assignments etc. who also can deny the huge role of the internet in our lives not only in education, internet is one of technologies that facilitates the education process to its most, think about getting a book to do your research or studies, today you don't have to go in circles and ask people here and there in order to bring you a book while with a click of a button you can download it and start your work.
Using both technology and internet together also contributed into facilitating the means of education delivery itself, and a good example for that is the distance learning concept, where you can do your studies and attend classes and get you degrees all online, you only need a PC and an internet connection to do so, like the wonderful Masters & Doctorate programs that is offered by AIU. (ref. 3)
Since education starts from the individual, then it will affect the whole society and also the whole world, the main reason for education is for individuals, societies, and countries to achieve their own goals and/or objectives, those goals may include: economic, scientific, industrial, social, and many more objectives.
There has always been a strong relationship between the economy, science, industry, and society, we can say that all dependent on each other, and as we have mentioned earlier that science may lead or enhances the research and development for a certain country, then innovation will start to contribute to raise the economy growth over time. The science will make us in need to create different industries in order to apply those inventions on the ground.
Social achievements of education is also important for any individual, and maybe it's one of his/her priorities, as I have mentioned previously that man always seeks communication and sharing with other people from the same community and from others as well, man cannot live in isolation, and the main reason for that in my view is to learn and learn more from others, and to teach others at the same time.
So it's all about sharing knowledge, and this sharing causes a strong self satisfaction feeling for any individual, so whenever you teach somebody any subject you feel yourself as if you have a very sacred message that has to be delivered to the whole world, it is education then, education helps to achieve our goals and objectives what so ever.
Though we are saying that education is so helpful in its high level and theory levels, but in fact there could be a lot of mistakes and draw backs in the implementation and application levels, so to me education should be much more different than how it is now.
In the theoretical level education could have the same structure as Bloom's one but only we might need to increase the number of classifications or taxonomies, as the concept was developed a way back (1950) and since we are living in the a changing environment then it makes sense that it could require some modifications nowadays.
If we wanted to get down a little bit in the details level and specially the measurement of education which is usually done through examinations, here I could have some different view, as the exam is not necessary to be a measure for the full awareness of a subject, and in fact the concept of the exam has been switched to be a goal for everybody who's studying and actually exams are not goals in my view, but success could be a goal, knowledge could be a goal ... etc.
There has been a huge disadvantage of concentrating on examinations in order to succeed, as exams made everybody keen on just passing the exam and not caring much about what will happen after the exam for the rest of his/her life, examinations also enforced the idea of memorizing subjects and information by heart, which in turn will reduce the level of creativity in any field after time. My main idea is based is focusing on how to measure the education and knowledge level without sitting for exams, how to translate this knowledge into numeric value that could be used for latter comparisons?
When it comes to evaluation, this means we are talking about assessment, you could be assessing a student against others, you can assess the student against some previous records, so what I think is to change the formal testing approach, at the end we need the student or whoever asking for information to be keen to acquire that information not acquire the exam.
Assessments are with two main types: summative, and formative assessments, where the summative assessment is where the actual test or exam is already happening and marks and evaluations for that exam will take place in the normal way, while the formative is actually like a self testing, it's that type of testing that the student usually does while he/she is studying in order to check his level of knowledge before sitting for the exam (ref. 4).
My point of view is based actually on the second type of assessment which is the formative one, with some enhancement in that technique and some regulation as well as standardization we can reach to a level where the student can truly evaluate him/her self without focusing on a specific questions and answers technique.
Another way to classify the assessment process is to distinguish whether it's formal or informal, where the formal is the way that depends on paper or documents, in other words the normal examination technique, while the informal is that way that depends on the casual discussions that usually happen in the class between the teacher and the students about a certain subject in order to make sure that people understand the subject, also my idea is to focus on this way which is the informal approach, and with some enhancements and regulations, we can make the student even assess him/her self(ref. 5).
In fact I believe that we need to develop the creativity on students minds more than developing the memory, creativity will help everybody in the society to solve any problem, and to achieve any goal, so we need to add more creative techniques in our way of studying and what I think is the best is to let the student evaluates him/her self based on certain structure which is not to be based on questions and answers, or memorizing certain wordings.
I don't think it's going to a good idea to mention those creative ideas now in this research, as it will require a separate one, I'm only trying to pinpoint this particular technique for education, this doesn't mean that there is o good techniques which is also based on the examination one of them is the distance learning methodology, and how this technique helps students to achieve their educational goals without exerting extra efforts on travelling and attending long lecture, while they can sit comforted at home and do your studies and get your degree. One example of course for this distance learning program, is the program for Atlantic international University for Master’s and Doctorate.
Conclusion:
At the end all what we wanted to say is that we are all seeking education and following its different methodology and also doing researches about it in order to improve it from time to time, as we have mentioned before education can help the society to gain a basic level of knowledge and understandings, that help people to achieve their short and long term goals, I cannot imagine an uneducated society or village and how much those people can suffer in their lives, especially those in the developing countries and the poor ones, so many people needs help in this particular area and it's our duty to do some assistance by any mean.
Our focus in the coming ages should be more on more and more thinking and creative ideas and activities, the main reason for that is to have and individual but society but even the whole world, capable to respond correctly to the changing environment that we live in, for me I think the process starts from the teacher, he/she has to think in a different way, we should make him/her think out of the box, we should give teachers the chance to make us think and be more creative in our studies, actually this reminded me with the famous Socrates say: "I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think" yes this is actually should be our target in education, to teach people how to think in the subject and them give the free hand to be creative in the subject every one according to his/her backgrounds and experiences.
0 comments:
Post a Comment