The head teachers and their training for designing written evaluation tools

Introduction: the quality in the design of written evaluation tools may have effects on their EDUMECENTRO 2014;6(2):94-109 ISSN 2077-2874 RNPS 2234 Santa Clara may.-ago. http://www.revedumecentro.sld.cu 96 validity and reliability, as well as in their academic results. Objective: to identify the level of pedagogical training of head teachers of the integrative disciplines in the courses of study of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing, regarding the design of written exams in their subjects. Methods: an observational, descriptive and transversal study was done at the Medical Sciences University of Villa Clara, during the 2011-20l2 academic year. With this purpose, an evaluation guide was applied to 21 exams, and also an interview was done to the 14 head teachers of the main subjects. Results: most of the head teachers possess the teaching rank of Assistant Professor, they have over six years of teaching experience, and less than five years of experience as head of the subject teacher staff. They received upgrading activities and academic training in pedagogy, and especially, about the evaluation system. This training is evident in the criteria they express about the characteristics that an exam should have, their mastery on the variants of items to use, as well as their advantages and disadvantages. Nevertheless, these results also verify difficulties in the design of the written evaluation tools in these main subjects. Conclusions: some difficulties are verified in the performance of the head teachers regarding the design of the written evaluation tools. Therefore, it is an urgent need to improve the strength of the methodological work to perfect this teaching performance at the levels of subject teacher staff and discipline staff.