Vocational High School Teachers’ and Students’ Opinions About Performance Tasks

Abstract

The aim of the study is to determine the opinions of teachers andstudents in a Vocational High School about performance tasks. This study wascarried out with 17 vocational high school students and 13 teachers. This studywas conducted through qualitative research design by analyzing the records ofthe individuals who shared their own interviews, observations and documents.The data were analyzed through content analysis. The first codes weregenerated for each question and the collected data were arranged in an inducibleapproach by determining appropriate themes for these codes. All the codes andthemes were checked by second researchers. Moreover, the consistency incoding was determined. In addition to the interviews, observations anddocument analysis were performed. The results of this study demonstrate thatboth the students and the teachers do not have sufficient knowledge about whatthe performance task is and how it is carried out. Therefore, the performancetasks carried out do not reach their goals. Performance tasks should measurehigher order thinking, and they should be related to real life situations. Theresults of the study show that performance tasks do not demonstrate thesefeatures. In addition, students should have knowledge and understanding of thesubjects in order to complete their performance tasks. On the other hand, theyare supposed to perform a performance task about a subject which they mostlydo not understand or they do not know. This may be the reason whyperformance task does not reach its goal.