REVISITING EVALUATION IN THE ECTS SYSTEM: INNOVATIVE CHALLENGES FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHER TRAINING

In this paper we report on the outcomes of the implementation of the Teaching Innovation Project “Innovating Evaluation as a Predictor of Quality in the ECTS: First language, second language and special education” at the Faculty of Education of the University of Granada. This project has been funded by the University of Granada as part of its teaching quality programme. Throughout this project, we have implemented new methods of teaching and evaluation to get European quality standards.
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (2001) states that evaluation should be treated in the Foreign Language classroom as a means to achieve teaching awareness, self-reflection, and compromise with the teaching profession. Given the fact that our EFL teacher trainees claim that they lack (in)formation to develop updated evaluation techniques in their classrooms when they become inservice teachers, we try to show different models which may be beneficial to make implicit and silenced practices explicit when it comes to this central pillar in education.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have played a core role in the building of dialogical methodologies of language teaching. The use of evaluation blogs or didactic messengers have proved their validity as new and innovative tools which report benefits such as autonomy and self-evaluation, basic competences established by the Bologna Process. We conclude this work claiming evaluation as a complex process which impregnates the whole process of teacher training.
We aim at achieving the following objectives through the development of this paper:

1.- To develop a well-planned qualitative and quantitative evaluation method in the EFL teacher training classroom at university level.
2.- To foster the use of qualitative research in evaluation to familiarize our students with new scientific methods to bridge theory and practice.
3.- To recognise the core importance of evaluation as a means of personal and professional growing in EFL teacher training.
4.- To provide students with the necessary skills to conduct their own critical methods to face evaluation in the EFL class.

Firstly, we present the state of the art concerning evaluation practices in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning with special reference to The Common European Framework of Reference for the Teaching of Languages. Secondly, we settle the strengths and weaknesses of the evaluation methods carried out in EFL teacher training. Finally, taking into account these premises, we design a new evaluation model-project to be piloted, implemented, and evaluated by student teachers.