Four Steps to Teaching Evaluation Skills

Almost every agriculture teacher, at some time during their career, has been asked the question, "What do you teach?" Many of us reply with the title of the courses we teach or focus on the subject matter. Yet, what we know to be true but sometimes have trouble communicating to those outside agricultural

Evaluation is one of those terms that everyone knows what it means yet has trouble defining the concept. A group of critical thinking experts have described evaluation as the ability "to assess the credibility of statements or other representations which are accounts or descriptions of a person's perception, experience, situation, judgment, belief, or opinion; and to assess the logical strength of the actual or intended inferential relationships among statements, descriptions, questions or other forms of representation" (Facione, 1990). These same experts included assessing claims and assessing arguments as sub-skills of evaluation. But what exactly does all of this mean and, perhaps more importantly, how can we teach students the skill of evaluation?

When I started thinking about teaching evaluation as a critical thinking skill, the First thing that came to mind was ways we teach students to assess the value of information and the credibility of sources. Anecdotal evidence suggests that students today believe the internet has replaced the library. One teacher I know stated, "Students think that if it is on the internet, it is as good as if it were in the bible." So 1 started thinking about ways to teach students the skill of evaluation using the internet. I thought about teaching a lesson on genetically modified foods and how teachers might incorporate activities designed to teach students how evaluate internet sites by comparing and contrasting information.

Through such a lesson, it would be possible to teach students how to assess the credibility of various sites and claims related to the production and consumption of genetically modified foods. This type of lesson could be very effective at teaching evaluation. But, after more thought. I realized that some of the most popular activities within agricultural education and the FFA are also some of the best activities for helping students develop evaluation skills. Whether we realized it or not, agriculture teachers have long been teaching students evaluation skills when preparing students to compete in many of the evaluation-based Career Development Events (CDEs), such as the livestock evaluation CDE.

When trying to develop students' evaluation skills, it does not really matter if you are trying to teach critical thinking in an on-line world or how to place a class of market swine. What matters is the development of the thinking process required for students to make reasoned judgments and support them. No matter the content used and the context in which it is taught, I believe there are four steps involved in teaching the skill of evaluation.

Step 1: Provide Foundation Knowledge

Before students can evaluate something, they must first speak the language. As teachers, it is our job to help students acquire the necessary foundation knowledge. In the case of evaluating livestock, students must first learn such things as the parts of each species, general terms appropriate for describing animals, specific terms appropriate for describing market animals, specific terms appropriate for describing breeding animals, and the performance measures used in the evaluation of livestock. For example, students should learn that finish is the appropriate term for describing the fat cover of market animals while condition is the appropriate term for describing the fat cover of breeding animals. Learning the foundation knowledge is an important first step in developing evaluation skills.

Step 2: Provide Evaluation Criteria

After learning to speak the language, students must know the criteria that will be used in the evaluation. In other words, they have to know what to look for. In the case of livestock evaluation, the criteria for evaluating market animals is different that the criteria for evaluating breeding animals. According to Gillespie (2004), there are nine factors students should look at when judging classes of market animals (type; muscling; finish; carcass merit; yield; quality; balance; style; and smoothness) and five factors when judging breeding animals (condition; size; feet, legs, and bone; breed character; and sex character). Students should learn what each factor means when learning the foundation knowledge in Step 1, but should learn what to look for with respect to each factor during this second step. For example, in Step 1, students should learn that muscling refers to the natural fleshing of the animal and in Step 2 that the width of the round, depth of the round, and width between the legs are things to look for when assessing the muscling of animals when looking at them from the rear (Gillespie, 2004). Students need to learn what to look for when evaluating a class of feeder cattle as opposed to a class of slaughter cattle. They need to learn how to look at a class of eight keep/cull ewes and narrow it down to the four most desirable animals. In essence, teachers need to help students identify what factors to look for when evaluating each type of class they will find in the livestock CDE. By doing this, students know the criteria they will be using when conducting the actual evaluation.

Step 3: Apply the Criteria

Once they know the evaluation criteria, students are ready to learn how to conduct the evaluation. In the case of livestock evaluation, students need to learn how to critically evaluate a set of animals. Every teacher probably has their own specific method that they teach their students, but for the most part, students are taught to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each animal on an individual basis and then compare and contrast the differences between animals. Once these characterizations have been made, students are often taught to group the animals into an obvious top animal, an obvious bottom animal, and a middle pair of similar animals or into a two pair class with a top pair and a bottom pair. These techniques provide students with a framework for making judgments about the animals in each class and identifying the reasons behind those judgments. Essentially, students have conducted the evaluation by applying the criteria learned in Step 2.

Step 4: Communicate Findings of the Evaluation

After applying the criteria and conducting the evaluation, students need to communicate the findings of the evaluation. In livestock judging, students usually communicate their findings through oral reasons. By preparing their reasons, students must once again go through the thought process they used to make their placing. In delivering their reasons, students make claims about each animal and justify their placing. In essence, students are trying to demonstrate to others that they have the skills to conduct sound evaluations.

Conclusion

Education reform has called for the integration of critical thinking skills. In other words, schools should be teaching students how to think, not just what to think. Agriculture teachers have long been teaching the skill of evaluation. What we need to remember, and perhaps emphasize more, is that teaching livestock evaluation is just as much about teaching the skill of evaluation as it is about judging livestock.

Not all of our students will remain in the field of agriculture, but the chances of them one day buying a car or a house is pretty good. The evaluation skills they learned when judging livestock are transferable to these, and many other situations, but only if students recognize exactly what it is they learned. Students should know that judging livestock, or even assessing the credibility and accuracy of information on the internet in a lesson on genetically modified foods, is really an exercise in thinking. In terms of teaching the skill of evaluation, the final responsibility of the teacher is to emphasize the transferability of the skills learned in the process by which students arrived at their decisions.