Giselle Miranda

Language and Communication VI

Education is one of the most important elements in society. Education gives people
the quality of taking the right decisions through life, helping to develop different skills that
are useful for certain opportunities. Moreover, it is the main tool of knowledge that makes
someone a complete person. Problems of lack of education are some of the reasons there are
teachers that have been questioned in their performance, and today it is one of the most
spoken topics at national level. A proposal of improving education level in Chile is the
INICIA Test, which is an standardized test that graduate pedagogy students has to take in
order to measure their level as teachers. This test consists on a series of questions, some of
them will be of knowledge of the corresponding subject that the teacher is qualified, and the
other part of the questions include disciplinary knowledge and methodologies. People who
agree with this test say that is a good way to know if the quality of education that new
teachers will provide in schools or institutions. But, is it really an appropriate method to
prove that a teacher will be a good educator? Someone who has been prepared during five
years at university to be a teacher will be capable of educate properly. If students that were
prepared to be teachers practiced during their formation, they may have improved their
performance, for the reason that some issues can be fixed during practical work at schools.
Not all required skills can be measured through a standardized test.

Firstly, according to the Ministry of Education of Chile, the objective of this test is to
identify pedagogical and disciplinary knowledge reached by gradated pedagogy students
(2015). When knowledge is measured through a written test, students prepare themselves to
answer the questions given in the tests. At the moment of studying for these kinds of tests,
students tend to use memoristic method, that is to say, they consider which questions are
probably to appear in the paper sheet and what they will write specifically. This is not a
meaningful way of learning and showing all your skills. Because you may memorize
concepts, definitions and words, but if the content is really understood, it will last for a long
time. When students memorize contents for answering a test, they immediately forget that
information after taking it. In this case, there is the possibility of a person who does not have
an appropriate communication with students and classroom management during teaching
performance, but that person actually can answer to a written test effectively and reach good
points. However, theory is important to apply it during practical performance. The idea of
applying a test of this category is good, but, knowledge is not measured effectively in
multiple choice items. Also, after been taught with pedagogical theory is necessary to check
how to apply this theory during teaching performance. The best way of make sure of good
accomplishment as an educator is the practicum itself. Nevertheless, the knowledge of
contents will be useful during teaching process. But, it would be more useful to make a test in
which graduate teachers are put into a situation, then the answer would be more meaningful
than answering a multiple choice methodology test that actually gives the answer and does
not encourage critical thinking.

Secondly, the average quantity of time studying a profession is five years. During
these years, pedagogy students have to be taught with different subjects related to education
and values. They are given with opportunities to improve their issues with the most important
evaluation of their teaching skills with their professional practicum. That is to say, as aspiring
teachers, they are constantly being evaluated in order to graduate good teachers for the future.
They have a thesis to defend, researches to do, etc. They are constantly being checked in
order to develop an important value for educator, which is critical thinking. Also, the
knowledge of important elements that will affect during their future performance is evaluated
during those years. Five years is an appropriate quantity to be trained. Moreover, if they
graduate is because they did an effort, so they could reach their objective of being a teacher.
It is a good to question teachers’ quality and trying to find a solution to improve it, but the
problem itself needs a deeper research before making a drastic decision of taking a test to
evaluate teachers.

Third, results of students are an important factor to consider during researching about
level of education in general. Bad results in some places of our country helped to question
quality of education. “Students’ performance in Chile is usually measured through
standardized tests, particularly in SIMCE. Although it was initially questioned as a measure
of quality, it has generated relative consensus to accept as the way it is.” (León, 2008).
However, getting bad results in a test does not mean to be a bad student. The problem is that
the system used to measure quality of students is just one. The same method used not only in
the INICIA test but also in tests such as SIMCE and PSU to evaluate students at school or
before applying to superior education. Furthermore, during the semesters of studying at
school or other levels of education, students are still using this method in most of the time,
with the difference that it is not the unique method used in this case, which is positive.
“Howard Gardner and his colleagues at the prestigious Harvard University warned that
academic intelligence is not a decisive factor to determine the intelligence of a person.”
(Regader, 2014). Multiple intelligences have an important role in daily life. Some people are
really successful solving mathematical tasks, while others do not have this virtue because
they perform effectively in some other kind of tasks, such as artistic, linguistic, etc.
Traditional tests as SIMCE measure reading comprehension, among other skills. The problem
is that some students are probably great in abilities that are not included in none of the
subjects of this test. This may affect their self-esteem and motivation because they feel they
are not intelligent or good students. Some bad results on these tests are related to their
different skills that they probably haven’t discovered yet, or they actually are not motivated.
It is fine to consider the role of the teachers in these cases and evaluate them, that is the
reason INICIA has an item of methodologies and didactics, which is a good point. However,
it will depend on the school, the students’ motivation, or class environment if the
methodologies work or not. Answering INICIA test well can be good to know the teacher
manages the content, but it is still a doubt if they really will apply that knowledge in the
classroom.

In conclusion, the idea of making a test in order to measure quality of teachers is good
and demonstrates interest in Chile’s government to improve education at some level.
Although Chile ‘stands out at Latin American level’ (Moreno, 2014) in results of PISA test,
which measures education worldwide, it is still a low result in comparison with the rest of
countries of the world. Teachers have responsibility for the improvement of results, but it is
not correct to blame it all on teachers. According to Nazira Guerrero, students are responsible
of their own learning (2010) meanwhile teachers guide them in their learning process.
INICIA test has a good intention behind. Therefore, it is not a mandatory test yet, which
means the ministry is considering the fact that some changes are possible in the future.
However, it is necessary to research more deeply about the actual problems in education to
propose a real solution in order to improve the quality of education.
 Bibliography

Mineduc (2015). Evaluación Inicia. October 10, from MINEDUC Web site:
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León, M. (2008). Calidad docente y rendimiento escolar en Chile. October 14 from Escuela
de Ingeniería PUC. Web site:
https://repositorio.uc.cl/bitstream/handle/11534/1447/507135.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Regader, B. (2014). La Teoría de las Inteligencias Múltiples de Gardner. October 14, from
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Moreno, G. (2014). Prueba PISA: escolares chilenos están entre los más bajos de la OCDE
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Guerrero, N. (2010). Rol del alumno y del profesor. October 10, from Tecnológico de
Monterrey Web site: http://campus.cva.itesm.mx/nazira/roles.html