Thesis - Open Access
Master of Science (MS)
In order to understand and appreciate the total individual in the modern schoolroom situation, a teacher must have means of more adequately evaluating that student’s progress in many phases of the educational program. Emphasis heretofore has been placed upon the acquisition of knowledge. Today educators are concerned not only with the students acquiring knowledge but also, and to a much greater degree, with how this information helps the student to understand himself and how it changes his behavior and helps him to adjust to living in a democratic society. In homemaking education, as well as in other fields, teachers at both the secondary and the college levels are interested in learning at what developmental stage a student is and how best to help that person to grow and progress beyond his present level. In order to more effectively help a student, educators need devices and techniques to measure and then to evaluate this knowledge. With this information, a teacher may build on what the students already know. Information which one may have at one’s command is of little or no value unless it will be used to change one’s behavior pattern or to concur with one’s way of doing work. Consequently, an evaluation device must give a student the opportunity to express himself in different ways so that a composite picture may be secured. For this reason, devices for testing should cover broad areas of pupil activity within a limited field. Sometimes a student rapidly learns certain information from a book, but to make application to a practical problem may be difficult. A testing device should help the teacher to more accurately see the placement of a student in a group, and it should help her to determine what phases of pupil activity or learning need special attention or additional practice. At present there is a dearth of such testing and evaluating devices in homemaking education; so the purpose of these test is to attempt to measure the learnings acquired in phases of food preparation, whether those learnings acquired in phases of food preparation, whether those learnings were secured in a formal classroom situation, in the home kitchen, or while the student was doing work for money. Not only do the devices attempt to measure the acquisition of information, as illustrated by her attitudes toward certain food preparation procedures and by her practices in such activities. Paper and pencil tests are the one means of testing that are most commonly used. However, the real test of a student’s knowledge is in its application to a life situation. Therefore, no battery of tests would be complete without some device for checking skills involved in preparing a simple meal. An attempt was made to evaluate such intangible skills as management of time, supplies and equipment, and in the service of the meal. It is hoped that these testing devices may be used successfully for classification of students for freshman foods classes in home economics. Teachers of homemaking at the secondary level are often concerned about the fact that pupils who plan to prepare for a career in home economics by going to college do not take all the homemaking courses offered in the high school curriculum. The reason frequently voiced is that there is little use of doing so because first year college courses are just a repetition of the same information which they have learned in high school. This should not be the case. If a pupil really understands the principals involved in a procedure and can make application under varying conditions she should not have to repeat such learnings. However, some students think that they have certain understandings just because they at some time have been exposed to them in a high school class, and in reality they know very little. For this reason these testing devices should be such that an individual student can see for herself where her knowledge is lacking. With this information she should not object to being required to take certain elementary courses in foods work, even though she previously felt that she had the information.The purposes of the devices are two-fold: first, because of an awareness of the need for more information on the preparation and experience which students bring to their classes, it is hoped that the use of the devices may be effective in classifying first-year college students in food preparation classes. The information secured from the devices may be helpful in planning the college curriculum so that students may be challenged and stimulated to greater effort and learning. Secondly, it is hoped that the devices may serve as an incentive to high school pupils interested in majoring in home economics in college to take, in high school, as many years of homemaking as the curriculum offers, so that they may have an adequate background for the college courses which they will take later.
Library of Congress Subject Headings
Home economics -- Study and teaching
Includes bibliographical references
Number of Pages
South Dakota State University
No Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Only
Colburn, Zora Ruth, "Development of Devices Which Might Be Used in the Classifcation of Freshman Students in Foods Classes" (1954). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2268.