Article Details

  • 54 Total Views:
  • 19 No of Download

A MACHINE LEARNING FRAMEWORK FOR DETECTING POTENTIAL SCORING INCONSISTENCY IN TEACHING PRACTICE ASSESSMENT AMONG NIGERIAN COLLEGES OF EDUCATION

Authored By: Aliyu M., Muazu B. S.

Article Number: 1785433893

Received Date: June 17th 2026 Published Date: July 30th 2026

Copyright © 2020 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article.

Teaching Practice (TP) assessment is a fundamental component of teacher education in Nigeria because it determines the professional readiness of pre-service teachers. Despite the use of standardised assessment rubrics, TP evaluation remains vulnerable to subjectivity and potential inconsistencies in scoring among supervisors. This study developed a predictive modelling framework for detecting anomalies in TP scoring using machine learning techniques. Secondary TP assessment data comprising 2,685 records from 102 supervisors, covering seven weighted assessment components: Preparation, Presentation, Classroom Management, Communication Skills, Evaluation, Teacher Personality, and Reflective Journal, were analysed using the Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) regression algorithm, with an 80:20 train–test split. The model was used not to predict scores for their own sake, since the total score is arithmetically derivable from its components, but to learn a behavioural benchmark of typical supervisor scoring against which each supervisor’s actual awarded scores could be compared through residual analysis. On the held-out test set, the model achieved a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 2.13 and an R² of 0.89. Residual analysis identified a small subset of supervisors whose scoring patterns persistently diverged from the learned benchmark, suggesting possible scoring inconsistency that warrants moderation review rather than a confirmed bias. Feature importance analysis showed that Presentation and Teacher Personality contributed most strongly to predicted scores. The study contributes a supervisor-level moderation framework, novel in Nigerian teacher education, that supports evidence-based, targeted review of TP assessment records rather than blanket manual rechecking, and offers a scalable approach to improving assessment reliability in Nigerian Colleges of Education

Musa A. & Muazu B. S. (2026). A Machine Learning Framework for Detecting Potential Scoring Inconsistency in Teaching Practice Assessment among Nigerian Colleges of Education. Journal of Science, Technology, and Education (JSTE); www.nsukjste.com/. 10(36), 492–510.

Aliyu M.
Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Computing, Federal University Dutse, Jigawa State
Muazu B. S.
Department of Computer Science Education, Jigawa State College of Education and Legal Studies, Ringim