Teachers' views of student achievement standards

Abstract

Teachers are one of key factors of the realization and success of the reform processes in the education system. The paper reports about a research of the views of class- and subject elementary-school teachers of the importance of defining, and the role of defined achievement standards, as well as their limitations. Also, it was examined to what extent teachers follow the defined standards when they prepare a written preparation for a lesson. The sample included 290 class- and subject-teachers and 51 written lesson preparations. According to the results obtained in the research it can be stated that there were certain differences in the teachers' reports about the importance of defining students' achievement standards as well as the frequency of defining and recording standards in written preparation of lessons: more than half teachers think that implementing standards in lesson preparations is important, a third of respondents think that it is very important to define achievement standards, but they were implemented in only two written lesson preparations. The results of this research can be useful both to teachers and education policy planners, since they show how important it is to include class- and subject-teachers in the reform processes and to give them a continuous support in implementing achievement standards as teaching regulators.