Students Give High Marks to the Field Test
In my previous blog, I described how teachers are overwhelmingly satisfied with the field test of the lesson ideas they develop at the AIER’s Teach-the-Teachers Workshop: Economics Across the Curriculum. Today, I would like to share my analysis of students’ evaluations of the implemented lessons.
Our program is designed to encourage teachers to apply the content and pedagogical knowledge they gained at the workshop in their classroom. On average, 40 percent of the participants take this challenge and implement their lesson idea. Of the 2016 cohort of 83 teachers, 34 administered their lessons, directly impacting 831 students.
The lesson ideas and topics were diverse, representing the various subjects and grade levels of participating teachers. But at the end of the lessons, all students had to fill out a common evaluation form to allow us to understand how well our program helps students. The form contained 10 questions with a Likert scale for answers: strongly agree, mostly agree, agree, mostly disagree, strongly disagree. After obtaining this qualitative evidence, we make improvements to the program.
The chart above summarizes the results from the end-of-class evaluation form. As one can see, the overwhelming majority of students either strongly agreed or mostly agreed with statements like “The goal of the lesson was clearly identified,” “The activities were engaging and informative,” “Student interaction and response were encouraged,” and “My understanding of the topic improved.” Seventy-two percent of students strongly agreed, and an additional 15 percent mostly agreed, with the statement “My teacher is knowledgeable about this topic.”
As we embark on this summer’s new cycle of TTI workshops (we are going to St. Louis, Miami, and Omaha), we are pleased that the program continues to benefit teachers and students by providing them with an understanding of economic concepts, thereby advancing AIER’s mission.
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