An Empirical Study To The Teaching Assessment Of "Learning-centered Classroom" In Elementary Schools

The educational research in present day indicates a transform in orientation,that is,students' quality development is gradually substituting knowledge mastery to become the central core. In order to improve students' quality, traditional classrooms where lecturing is the leading teaching method ought to be reformed radically, and a new classroom teaching model based on student learning is urged to be explored. To accelerate the practical process of this reform, a scientific and systematical classroom assessment system has to be established out of the "learning-centered" philosophy. The existing classroom assessment systems are constructed in the perspective of teachers' instruction,i.e.,"using teaching to access teaching" and they are obviously not in accordance with our "learning-centered" philosophy. Consequently, it is fundamental to design a brand-new assessment system which is grounded on students' learning behaviors, i.e.,"using leaning to access teaching". This work is meant to be of great benefit to the construction of learning-centered classroom.In this research, two qualitative research methods, namely field notes and text analysis,are utilized to form the "student learning behaviors code table" which is constituted by 20 learning behaviors codes. With the aid of this table, four classroom videos from four different teachers are encoded and analyzed to exemplify how to access the quality of classroom teaching based on students' learning behaviors. The data suggest that in these four cases, student learning is no longer equal to passively listening,answering and practicing, but is experienced and completed in the form of independent learning, group discussion and oral presentation.The core value of this research is that it makes a breakthrough where classroom teaching is only evaluated through teachers' behaviors, and it establishes a new classroom teaching assessment system based on students' learning behaviors, which successfully puts "learning-based" and "learning-centered" into practice in the field of teaching assessment. Honstly, some limitations and possibilities for further research still exist, e.g., the observation units are not unified, learning quality cannot be directly reflected from the collected data, more comparative research can be conducted, and the code table can be further simplified to cater for a specific subject.This dissertation is composed of six chapters.Chapter One, Introduction, illustrates the research background, purpose and value,and introduces the research design and methods.Chapter Two, Literature Review, introduces the history of classroom assessment research in western countries, reviews the pros and cons of several representative assessment tools,and analyzes the present situation and demands of classroom assessment research in China.Chapter Three, Concepts And Theories, gives definitions to several core concepts related to "learning-centered classroom" and demonstrates a few relevant theories.Chapter Four, The Design Of Classroom Learning Behaviors Codes, demonstrates the procedure of code designing, which includes the collection of classroom videos, text analysis, the component of code table and coding method.Chapter Five, Case Analysis, illustrates the three steps of classroom assessment, i.e.,firstly,analyze the teaching background with the "learning guidance sheet" provided by the teacher for reference; secondly,use the "student learning behaviors code table" to encode the classroom video; thirdly, use Matlab to conduct statistical analyses and evaluate the classroom teaching quality from the perspective of learning behaviors with the consideration of teaching background and activity designs. In this chapter, two Chinese class videos and two Mathematics class videos are selected to exemplify the above assessment process.Chapter Six,Conclusion and Prospect, makes a conclusion of the findings and limitations of this research.