Evaluación: ¿Qué es?

 

What is evaluation?

Definitions

At the lowest level evaluation is a regular social activity, such as that conducted by Which? magazine and other publications, and by ourselves. It makes comparisons amongst products or services, with a view to making a selection – a kitchen utensil or an investment, a car or a Chardonnay. At this level evaluation is comparative on the basis of relatively straightforward criteria and available information, and is a preliminary to decision-making. The criteria, of course, are not the same for everyone evaluating – comfort may or may not override the cost or style of a car, and labelling may or may not influence choice of a wine. In education the purposes and the criteria are inevitably more complex and evaluation is a process of acquiring information. Evaluation of an innovation or an activity, a curriculum or organisational change, raises a series of sometimes difficult or contentious issues. Who is sponsoring the evaluation, what do they want to know, and why do they want to know it? What depends on the outcomes – more or less finance, promotion or redundancy? What is the salient issue for the evaluation – change in student learning, staff development, value for money, position in a league table… ? Whose opinion counts most – students’ feedback in the university, the teachers’ perceptions in the school, project managers, administrators?

Evaluation in education therefore encompasses competing criteria and purposes, and is situated in potentially sensitive political and ethical contexts.

If you will be undertaking a 'task' at the end of this component you may find it helpful to make some notes as you go along.  At this point you could make a preliminary list of problems you think might be encountered in evaluating a new initiative in your own institution.

It is important to note that ‘evaluation research’ (a concept discussed below) is basically what is commonly called programme or project evaluation. The features of such evaluation (in its various forms) may be the same or similar at all levels of education, concern innovations, initiatives and developments of many kinds, and it is mostly conducted by individual evaluators or small teams. There are, however, other forms of evaluation that are not included in the discussion here. These include, commonly in higher education, the evaluation of teaching quality or of research or the evaluation of institutions, as part of a system approach to quality assurance conducted by national agencies. Teaching quality and institutional evaluation may also be conducted internally as a form of ‘self-evaluation’ (eg Ellington and Ross, ‘Evaluating teaching quality throughout a university’ [Robert Gordon University], and Adelman and Alexander, The Self-Evaluation Institution).

Definitions of ‘evaluation’ can indicate the intentions involved, but are elusive as complete explanations. The kind of definition that was often used in the 1950s and 1960s, notably in the United States, was:

Evaluation is the systematic assessment of the worth or merit of some object.

The judgmental tenor of that definition in fact reflects the evaluation of cars of Chardonnays – assessing their worth or merit in order to choose, though it does not reflect the casual nature of personal judgments that are often unsystematic. Subsequent attempts to define evaluation have adapted this formulation. Trochim, in the United States, for example, suggests:

Evaluation is the systematic acquisition and assessment of information to provide useful feedback about some object.

He explains the older and the revised versions, which both agree that evaluation is ‘systematic’ and use ‘object’ to refer to a programme, policy, technology, person, need, activity and so on. The revised definition, however, ‘emphasizes acquiring and assessing information rather than assessing worth or merit because all evaluation work involves collecting and sifting through data, making judgements about the validity of the information and of inferences we derive from it, whether or not an assessment of worth or merit results’ (Trochim,website). Whether evaluation makes judgments or is a preliminary to other people making judgments, is a contentious issue in the field (and is discussed further below). The former definition, assessing worth or merit, inescapably involves acquiring and assessing information, but the revised version does focus on the information. It suggests that assessing worth depends on an analytical approach to information, that is, on an understanding of the ‘object’ about which feedback is required.

Another, this time British, attempt at revising the first definition was in connection with the evaluation of educational institutions.  It defined such evaluation as involving:

the making of judgements about the worth and effectiveness of educational intentions, processes and outcomes; about the relationships between these; and about the resource, planning and implementation frameworks for such ventures. (Adelman and Alexander 1982, p. 5)

While retaining the notion of making judgments about worth, there are two important extensions in this version. First, the ‘object’ of study has acquired intentions, processes and outcomes; it is a complex sequence in which the parts have relationships, and it is therefore clear that evaluation is concerned in some way with that sequence. Second, this sequence is not isolated.  It is in a framework which has to do with resources, planning and implementation.  Evaluation therefore understands the sequence only by also taking account of the ‘framework’ in which the sequence takes place. The curriculum is in a classroom with its relationships, in a school, and in a complex and interactive context involving families and communities, authorities and the various levels of policy making - all of which affect what is taught and learned. Further education colleges and universities have their own departmental, disciplinary, institutional and other contexts that may have to be taken into account when a project or initiative is evaluated.

In considering evaluation in your institution are there possible major issues concerning relationships in the context of management, the whole institution, outside constituencies and agencies...? If you were to conduct an external evaluation in an institution other than your own, how different might the issues be from the ones you have considered above.

Tabla KWL:

What I Know	What I Want to Know	What I Learned
La evaluación es un proceso contante. Existen diversas formas para evaluar. Las teorías de evaluación han cambiado a lo largo de la historia. La evaluación no siempre es hacia otro individuo o ante un ámbito de la vida específico, sino que también nos evaluamos a nosotros mismos.	¿Qué implica evaluar? ¿Para qué evaluamos? ¿Existen teorías de evaluación? ¿Cuál es la forma más común de evaluación?	Existen diversas definiciones de evaluación. Varios autores definen la evaluación de formas diferentes y contrarias. Evaluamos en todo ámbito de la vida. Existen diversos criterios de evaluación, dependiendo del área en la que estemos evaluando. Los programas son un tipo de evaluación.