Participatory Evaluation In Education

Book excerpt: This text focuses on "participatory evaluation", an approach that involves teachers and educational administrators as partners with researchers in a broad range of school and school system-based evaluation tasks with the explicit goal of using such data to improve practice.; Participatory evaluation is a natural, suitable and effective approach to school improvement and educational change, and has been practiced by the editors and several colleagues for many years. Though participatory applied research strategies are growing in popularity, there is a paucity of documented empirical support for the approach. presenting a set of original empirical studies and a critical analysis of them this book will add to our knowledge about variations in the approach, conditions that support it, its viability within the culture of schools and school systems and its likely impact defined in terms of the use of research data and organisational learning.; The book will be useful for educational practitioners interested in critically evaluating the potential of participatory evaluation as an integral part of their own approach to educational reform. It will also clarify an agenda for research to further our understanding of the organisational benefits of this type of collaborative systematic enquiry.