GRAZ conference
22 – 26 September 2004
KEY NOTE 4: Saturday morning / Prof. dr. Peter Posch
University of Klagenfurt
AUSTRIA
The National Interest in School Self Evaluation – Implications for Policy(Handout)
Reasons for the national interest in school evaluation
If control via input regulations and prescriptions regarding process are no longer feasible control is directed towards output. In this situation educational systems come to a fork in the road and an important policy decision has to be made where to move on. The broad and apparently simple route is to mandate detailed standards and to use high stakes testing to place students and to evaluate schools.
A narrower and more demanding road is to develop a well attuned mixture of mandating self evaluation and of controlling the quality of self evaluation (meta-evaluation), of providing standards and benchmarks for orientation and supporting schools to develop their own standards, and of providing schools with a variety of instruments to evaluate their work and student achievement, etc.
The concept of self evaluation
Self evaluation is evaluation of activities by a person or group or institution for which this person, group or institution is responsible.
Some arguments in favour of self evaluation
The more complex a professional activity becomes the more policy interventions have to take into account the views of the practitioners and leave space for local adaptations.
Good practice in education cannot be “cloned”
Successful initiatives to improve the quality of educational servicesneed a close relationship between evaluation and development.
Quality development depends on the participation of all persons involved in teaching and learning.
The logic of supporting growth
"Government activity should be stimulating and regulating like withdrawing or inserting a lead rod in an atomic stock pile...., Directions and energies must be mobilized within the system itself." (Ernie House)
Experiences with self evaluation
Experiences of 6 schools which experimented with different models of self evaluation (e.g.. ISO 9000 ff., the Model of the European Foundation of Quality Managements, etc.)
Experiences of10 pilot schools which were asked to experiment with self evaluation based on a proposal by the Ministry of Education in which development and self evaluation were closely linked with each other (the “School Development Programme”).
Implications for policy
From these and other studies a number of implications for policy development have emerged. They are summarised in a document which was presented to the Austrian Ministry of Education.
In this document four major policy developmentsare suggested:
To provide a stable legal basis for self evaluation and development.
Toestablish a support network to assist schools in creating the necessary management structures and to provide the necessary training.
To develop and finance an incentive system for teachers involved in managing self evaluation and to provide operational resources
To redefine the tasks of the school inspectorate: Their primary task should be to evaluate the quality of self evaluation (meta-evaluation).
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