Infection control enabling and assessing teaching - Essay Example

Therefore, educational knowledge or nursing knowledge is integrated practical knowledge (Stake, R., 1977, p. 121-124). Life-long Learning: Life-long education is not a new concept, but the rapidly changing social conditions of the contemporary society has provided a wider impetus for a wider acceptance of this idea, and the adult educators have been a major force in drawing attention to the practice of life-long learning. To assess learning, the educator utilizes a wide range of methods for evaluating pupil performance and attainment.

These include formal testing and examinations, practical and oral assessments, and classroom based assessment. Theoretically, there are three types of assessments. Formative assessment takes place during the course of the teaching and is used essentially to feed back into the teaching or learning process. Summative assessment takes place at the end of the term or a course and is used to provide information about how much the students have learned and how well as course has worked. Ipsative assessment is the third and the most important category in which the pupil evaluates his/her performance against his/her previous performance (Wilkinson, W. J. and George, N. J., 1982, p. 222-235). This indicates that the process of assessment is undergoing a shift in the paradigm from psychometrics to a broader model of educational assessment and from the culture of testing and examination to the culture of assessment.

There is a wider range of assessments that are in use now. These include teacher assessment, standard tasks, coursework, records of achievement, practical and oral assessments mentioned earlier, written examinations, and standardized tests. There are criterion-referenced, formative, and performance-based assessments as well as norm-referenced testing. The consequent high-profile status of assessment is mainly due to the fact that assessment is required to achieve a wide range of purposes (Carr, W.

, and Kemmis, S., 1986, p. 86-94). The assessment process is mainly designed to support teaching and learning; it would provide information about pupils, teachers, and schools. In this way, assessment would drive curriculum and teaching and act as a selection and certification device and as an accountability procedure (Briton, D., 1996, p 101-102).Adult learning theory has been strongly influenced by humanistic psychology, although there is no single theory that represents the humanistic approach.

All such theories share a common view that this approach involves the study of a man as a human being, with his thoughts, feelings, and experiences (Brookfield, S., 1985, p. 23-28). This is in direct contrast to the stimulus-response theories, which study man from the point of view of overt behaviour, disregarding his inner feelings and experiences. Humanistic theories differ from cognitive theory in that the latter is concerned with the thinking aspects of a man's behaviour with little emphasis on the affective components.

Humanistic theory is closely related to the philosophical approach called phenomenology, which asserts that reality lies in a person's perception of an event and not in the event itself. This also underpins three other concepts,