Comparative Assessment and Self-assessment of Students' Environmental Knowledge in Bulgaria and Turkey

Abstract

The article presents a diagnostic investigation of classroom self-assessment of 174 students in 8th grade of elementary school (92 from Bulgaria and 82 from Turkey). A method of assessment and self-assessment on 40 environmental terms was used. The skill of students to make right decisions about their environmental knowledge was studied. The influence of the differential effect of gender, social status and academic achievement level upon self-assessment was revealed. Comparative analysis of the results from Bulgaria and Turkey showed that most of the students did not reflect critically upon their knowledge and did not evaluate it against school achievement standards. Conclusions were directed to the develop-ment of a strategy for classroom assessment involving students consciously in self-assessment and using peer and teachers `assessment for learning, but not merely of learning.

Keywords

• Assessment
• Self-assessment
• Academic achievement
• Gender
• Social status
• Evaluation
• Self-evaluation
• 8th grade students
• Bulgaria
• Turkey