Diagnosis Through Testing of the Nervous System Learning by Secondary School Students

ABSTRACT

The present article deals with the issue for diagnosing knowledge and skills acquired during the process of learning the nervous system by eighth-grade students at the National Classical Lyceum in Sofia. The results from a designed non-standardized test on the topic are subject to analysis.

The definition for pedagogical diagnosis was suggested in 1968 by K. Ingenkamp based on analogy with medical and psychological diagnosis. A broader sense is put in the notion of diagnostics than in the traditional check of the knowledge and skills acquired by the students. The process observes the results related to the ways and means of their acquisition. The former discloses the thread and dynamics of forming the educational product as well. Thus, the pedagogical diagnostics has the mission, first of all, to optimize the process of individual education; secondly, to ensure the correct definition of the educational results according to the public interest; and, thirdly, to minimize the students' errors guided by the chosen criteria. The diagnostics that serves for the improvement of the educational process should be oriented towards achieving the following goals:

1.	internal and external correction in case of false evaluation of the educational results;
2.	definition of the educational failures;
3.	planning the next stages of the educational process;
4.	motivation by means of stimulation towards success in the educational process as well as regulation the difficulty of the forthcoming steps;
5.	improving the conditions of the educational process.

The diagnostic activity aiming at defining qualification depends to a great extent on the social structures and requirements.

Keywords:

• diagnosis
• nervous system
• testing