The foundation of pedagogical content is the combination of both knowledge and pedagogy. The teaching sessions become boring if a teacher simply talks the ins and outs of a topic/subject. For example, an Economics teacher has to know exactly how to get the concepts across to students with practical examples and implementation rather than just discussing the definitions and referral points in the class room which are taken from a text book/Internet. The teacher must make efforts to make students to learn about positive reinforcement. Teachers cannot go further than their own knowledge of the subject based on their own understanding. And, students understand the good, better best, fair and poor teaching. They cannot be fooled for long. A good class room session consists of one or more pedagogical tools used by a teacher. Good sessions are always memorable. The pedagogical tools are therefore very important.

A seasoned teacher has a good understanding of where students are coming from in reference to the subject being taught. In order to teach a topic well, teachers have to know what the students bring to the table as far as prior ideas, feelings, experience and strategies. For example, many students tend to have personal thoughts about math word problems. A math teacher with pedagogical content knowledge would address each of these prior conceptions and show why each one is inaccurate. The teacher would help the students understand how to break down word problems to make them clearer and see them from a different perspective; after all the learning curve changes in each class room.

In every teacher’s career comes a time when the teacher needs to evaluate the amount of learning taken place in his/her class and its effectiveness. I think one of the best tools for measuring the efficacy is quizzes. There is no elaborate definition of quiz; but, it helps a teacher in gathering information whether learning objectives are met or not. Quizzes help students individually to increase their knowledge they may already know on a certain topic. They also help them to know whether certain topic is helpful in the future.  A quiz can be effectively be used from KG to PG at all levels of education.

Before using a quiz, teachers must determine what objectives need to be met. The primary function of the quiz is to evaluate student learning in relation to the teachers instructional methods. Teachers must analyze the results of the quiz and shows statistics and reports about those results. A well designed quiz will help motivate your students, highlighting the subject areas and skill-sets in which they are particularly strong, while pointing out those in which they would benefit by spending more time.

Teachers must be sure that quizzes are developed around content-related questions.
What you get out of your quizzes is determined by the content-related questions asked. If you want to find out how well students have mastered the concept; relate or ask questions pertaining to the concept only. Make sure to always keep simple questions in your quizzes.

As a teacher, your teaching efficacy is shown in the result of the quiz. Did your students pass or fail the quiz? That answer alone will measure student understanding and your teaching effectiveness, and allow you to see where you stand. By looking at the questions which your students answered incorrectly you can determine where there might have been a gap in instruction, or where students became confused. The students must be informed in advance to read up particular subject material in details before they take a quiz. They do not bother much about reading or learning usually. Quizzing keeps them busy with their studies because they get evaluated and they benefit from the feedback that tells them what aspects of their learning are incorrect. Most important thing about quizzes is that they should be treated as an interactive exercise rather than an evaluation. In addition to reducing the anxiety associated with evaluation, this encourages students to use the quizzes as an index of what they need to study.

As a teacher, I have used quizzes maximum because I have seen students can master the material. There should be session followed by the quiz where both teacher and students can talk on various issues/topics asked in the quiz. Preferably, for each question answered incorrectly, feedback should include information on where to turn to find the correct answer.

Item selection should be randomized to make it harder for students to cheat. If every student sees the same quiz items in the same order, students will compare notes and prepare answers to the questions rather than understanding the material. For the same reasons, there should be several different versions of each quiz item.

Quizzes should be due frequently. In keeping with the idea that accumulated practice is less effective than spacing learning throughout the semester, quizzes should be due on a regular basis, say once a week. The number of questions that should appear on a quiz should be based on what the course instructors consider to be appropriate for the class.

When using multiple-choice questions, wherever possible the order of the answers should be scrambled. This makes it harder for students to focus on the answer order and tends to focus them on what the correct answer is. Essay questions may be appropriate for quizzing but should be used sparingly, if only because of the time and effort required to grade them.

Use quizzes for a positive fortification in the classroom.

Kiran Jonnalagadda cleared his inter college course after five attempts. And by the time he did it, his friends had completed their engineering course. For Kiran, his journey had just begun. This examination-shy boy’s name now features in the team that developed the Human Protein Reference Database by John Hopkins University. The five attempts to clear the pre university examinations did not dither Kiran’s spirit. We will find many Kirans in this mad, mad academic world.

Academic competence and intelligence are very complicated to measure the scope of a student’s aptitude. But the fact remains that we need some formal system to check the grasp of a student in a subject. We need divisions between ability levels and the amount of experience and knowledge students actually possess, otherwise students will be in environments unsuited to them and won’t be able to learn appropriately. There is no other way to divide them than by testing them in a fair and impartial manner. Exams are required from this point of view only and yes, they require clear and measurable guidelines. These guidelines must change to suit the environment. When guidelines are neither clear nor reckonable, students are deceived to believe their incapability. Do examinations test student’s innate abilities and potential? Or are we largely testing their test-taking ability, confidence and doggedness?

John Glenn, Astronaut emerged during the tense space race of the 1950s and 1960s. He was one man who represented the face of the Americans attempting to beat the Soviets into space and, ultimately, to the moon. John Glenn became a war hero and one of the most famous astronauts in history, despite being college dropout. Glenn attended Muskingum College, where he studied science, but when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor he dropped out in order to fight in World War II. The world never saw Glenn’s academic progress sheet.

Do we accurately test students? They answer, give information or question intelligently what they are best at and what they are happiest with through the lectures in the classroom; teachers give them feedback during and after classes. Quarterly or monthly the parents/guardians of those students will receive report cards, showing which subjects their son/daughter is best at, and which they need the most help with. It will also be noted which subject classes are that child’s favorite. Parents and students must also be able to suggest ways in which their classes could be made better, so long as the suggestions are sensible, reasonable and that they contribute to the learning environment in such a way that the students learn more and at no cost to student-teacher and student-student relationships. If some students present more information than the teacher, how many teachers would like it? And, how many students appreciate their bright peers?

Intellectual exploration is hindered due to constant efforts of students towards mastering guess work, rote learning, memorizing the so called ‘standard’ methods of answering recurring  questions that were originally set to test a student’s response to untried problems.

What our examination system does is – it encourages practicing past papers in the anticipation of mastering tests and not the subject. Tests do not encourage the search of knowledge as much as the pursuit of great grades. Education should free the mind not restrict it to guidelines that are not transparent. Let us get this rightly; subjective or qualitative papers with essay questions are not as easy to measure as mathematics or other quantitative papers. It requires entirely different yardsticks to assess them.

Regular examinations result in students working toward exams and exams only. They do not work in order to learn or to seek knowledge. Students learn just to get rid of those examinations. It becomes knowledge for the sake of passing the class, receiving an A or B grade. That’s about it. Whilst coursework may easily be cheated on, it is absurd to suggest that the only other way of testing a student’s abilities and knowledge is through examination.

Debates, discussions, case studies with active class participation are one of the most effective ways of learning and retaining information. When teachers motivate students to give their opinions and views, the students gain a deeper insight into their own arguments on a topic and the class benefits from listening to these views. It also gives them a glimpse to compare their views to their peers. Through this, they can amend their own opinions or form new ones. Class participation is a necessary requirement seeing as how even if one person refuses to engage in the discussion, their own ideas are never put to the test of both the peers and their teacher, and so receive no benefit for their own beliefs, and the class also receives no benefit from that particular student. Full class participation is an absolute requirement for refining the pedagogy.

Examinations should be conducted only annually, not more than that. If there are inconsistencies between one’s examination and one’s school work, then this must be investigated thoroughly.

I often think why school dropouts do better than the regular school goers – I suppose this happens because the dropouts have no ready plan, they don’t have a degree or a guaranteed job to fall back on. So they need to push themselves harder. A dropout therefore starts earlier.
A dropout faces harsh realities; he leaps forward with fears, doubts and worries and faces life head-on. For a dropout every day is an exam. Albert Einstein the man behind E=MC2; the man who came up with the theory of relativity; and the man who won a Nobel prize—was in fact a high school dropout. He attempted to get into university, but initially failed the entrance exams.

Lastly, we give undue importance to grades and examinations though they can’t determine if someone is intelligent or not. Grades aren’t everything. If someone has scored good grades, it still could mean that the person is dumb at many other things in life. Some youngsters score low, but are good at many a things and are practical people. So either way Grades can’t determine everything. If you cheat on something for instance you get a good grade but it could still mean you’re not that smart because you cheated. School exams only test mugging up skills and competitive exams test for advanced skills which you are hardly taught anywhere. And, exam results don’t determine success in life.