Useful for teachers and teacher educators

1. QUALITY DIMENSIONS IN
EVALUATING SOCIAL SCIENCES

2. INTRODUCTION
• Evaluation in social science must
gauge what children have learnt in
terms of concepts, rules and
generalizations, and their ability to
use this knowledge for problem
solving and application in the real life
situations.
• The evaluation that measure lower
mental abilities like memory,
retention and reproduction of
facts/information should be
discarded.
• Rather higher cognitive skills like
Decision Making, Critical Thinking,
Effective Citizenship, Problem Solving
and Social Participation etc should be
evaluated in social science testing.

3. TOOLS FOR EVALUATING SS
Tools
Open Ended
Essay
Multiple Choice
Items
Project/
Assignments
Documentation
Discussion /
Conversation
Portfolio
Interpretative
Exercises

4. QUALITY ISSUES
Neglecting Affective and Psychomotor Aspects
Using Traditional Type of Test Items
Not Use of Non-testing Assessment Tools
Making question suitable for all
Lack of Scorer Realibility
Tracking Students Progress
Providing Feedback

5. SUGGESTIONS
• The HOTs, values and social skills should be
given more weightage in assessment.
• Question paper should consist of well
prepared and different types of items.
• The non-testing devices like projects,
assignments, group discussion, group work,
portfolio etc can successfully be used.
• Students reading and writing ability should
be taken into consideration while preparing
items.
• The items should have power to
differentiate students.
• The choices for essay question should be
parallel to each other.
• The evaluator should be given freedom to
score not on basis of model answer only but
from their own understanding on questions

6. • The attitude and work habits of students
need to be assessed in assignments and
projects.
• Analytical and Constructive Feedback to
students and teachers should be given on
both cognitive and non-cognitive
development.
• Interest of students towards study of
social sciences need to be fostered by
creating awareness about career options
and necessity for life.
• The capacity building programme for
teachers on assessment process in social
science need to be organized regularly.
• Questions can be pooled all year round,
from teachers, college professors,
educators from other states and even
from students (NCF-2005).

7. CONCLUSION
There is an urgent need to reform
evaluation system in general and
social science subject in particular.
The nature of social science content
demands more flexibility to students
in answering and to scorer in scoring
the essay questions.
The examination reform cannot be
successful until it linked to teacher
preparation and change of attitude
of stake holders of education like
parents, teachers, educational
administrators, educationists etc.