Evaluation In 21st Century: A Holistic Approach

Evaluation is widely acknowledged as a powerful means of improving the quality of education. It is the means by which development of an individual, course can be monitored to see it what it claims to be and if it achieves the desired outcomes. In order to take the evaluation in a desirable manner, the purpose of the teaching learning activities and their desired outcomes must be specified. The present examination system in India is predominately focusing only on the intellectual skills, the psycho motor and affective domains of holistic learning have not received their due importance. But the aim of education is developing the ‘whole child’. Holistic education demands development of all aspects of individual’s personality including cognitive, affective and psycho motor domains. In the present scenario it is very stressful for the parents, teachers and students only to be working on cognitive aspects without understanding the processes of learning. In order to bring about the improvement in the quality of the education and the holistic development of the child who is tomorrow’s global citizen, evaluation process should focus adequately on both scholastics and non-scholastic areas of development. In this paper, the focus is essentially on evaluation of students’ performance and to some extend of the system at large. Evaluation, a way of enabling everyone involved in it to develop and need to be conceived holistically, as a whole framework, building on the interdependence of its parts in order to generate complementarities, avoid duplication, and prevent inconsistency of objectives. Key Words: Evaluation, 21st century classroom, holistic approach Policy