DOES DIAGNOSTIC EVALUATION IN MATHEMATICS IMPROVE LEARNERS’ LEARNING?

Evaluation is essential to examine the level of conceptual understanding of a learner. It checks the understanding of mathematical concepts, their inter-relationships, and creating new conceptual structures. To get more useful results through the teaching-learning process diagnostic evaluation is used. The study was designed to describe what individual learners had learned, what they had yet to learn, and the type of errors they were making in the topic of 'rational expression’ of grade 10 Mathematics. The remedial ways to eliminate misconceptions were undertaken through the result of diagnostic evaluation. It was inferred that the use of diagnostic evaluation had a positive effect in eliminating mathematical misconceptions among learners. This suggests that the teachers should take recourse in adopting diagnostic evaluation integrated with teaching and learning of mathematics.