Creating, Implementing and Evaluating Teaching and Learning Materials for Functional Adult Basic Education in Serbia

Abstract

Functional basic adult education is entirely new model in dealing with complex issues related to low educational level and functional illiteracy of a good portion of adult population in Serbia. Due to the very nature of learning, educational goals and diverse needs of adult learners as well as dynamically changing demands of the wider society, implementation of functionally designed curriculum calls for development of specifically targeted teaching and learning materials instead of publishing textbooks conceptually similar to those commonly used in the mainstream system of basic education. Teaching and learning materials therefore bare special stress in the overall functional education concept and model. This paper describes the most critical aspects and steps in the process of designing, producing, implementing and evaluating teaching and learning materials in functional curriculum environment, together with some of the assessment results obtained this far and expected in the proximal future, by the mid-term of initial implementation school year 2011-12. Methodology applied to monitoring and evaluation of teaching and learning materials relies on the three types of assessment sources and designing assessment instruments tailored for each of them. Three types of assessment include expert, process and user assessment. Expert assessment involves independent experts in the field of functional basic adult education; process assessment is provided by school based education professionals, in accordance to their roles in observing and aiding implementation process; finally, assessment providers are teachers and students, as the immediate users of teaching and learning materials. Assessment instruments are designed to cover important categories and domains in materials usage, as well as quality indicators within each category. Initial assessing results obtained in the pilot phase of the Functional Basic Education of Adult Roma clearly shows that the quality of teaching and learning materials is of the paramount importance in achieving overall curriculum goals and outcomes.