Abstract:

The EduEval project is a project of the Lifelong learning programme of the European Commision (http://www.edueval.eu). The main scope of the project is to define the professional role of the adult education staff evaluator. During the first phase of the project, it was aimed to explore and understand how non-oficial evaluators performed the processes aimed for quality increase in their own educational institutions. While official evaluators usually have a strict legal procedure to follow for evaluation, accreditation or validation, in adult education institutions (after university level), and mostly in non-official institutions, there is not such a legal procedure for evaluation and quality increase. The role of evaluator is taken over by supervisors, managers, head of departments, experiences teachers, etc. We call it the non-formal level of evaluation.

No matter where this non-formal level of evaluation is done; it can be carried out in non-official or official educational institutions, public or private, or any kind or aims: chambers of commerce, adult education organizations, NGO, local governments, etc. The fact is that this non-formal level of evaluation lacks any of the usual components and procedures for evaluation, that is the indicators, measures, roles, etc. that can be obtained from ISO 9001 or EFQM, but not because of this, it is less important or powerful.

This papers shows the results of the research and the workshop of the EduEval project done in Crete, where 6 institutions over Europe (researchers and practitioners) meet and discussed about the evaluation process done in adult education institutions.

It was observed that the non-formal level evaluation can have some similarities with more strict procedures of quality and accreditation, as it could include also observation, surveys, interviews, etc. by somebody that later will emit a judgment, but it was observed that the main task and work done in related to evaluation in institutions was done daily, as a routine, in the usual and ordinary processes of the educational institutions, those could be also merged with other processes as project monitoring, risk assessment, planning, management, and even teaching itself. For this reason, we call it the “intraevaluation” process

This intraevaluation process was so very well integrated in the own daily procedures that it has obvious implications, as opposite to more official evaluation systems (focused to external accreditation or assessment). This implications were because of the tight relation between the role of the staff and the evaluation done, having direct impact as the plan-do-check-action cycle or the continuous quality increase. On the opposite, this level of evaluation, relies very much on the staff and trainers that are very motivated and with huge experience in the institution, and that even could be misunderstood as self-evaluation, the intraevaluation has more to do with and evaluation which source is the own experience and expertise of the staff and is applied to the range on which the staff could have some effect.

This paper is based on the research done in the EduEval project previous to the Creta worksop and summarizes the results of that experience, where new views and perspectives related to the evaluation could be extracted.

Keywords:

Evaluation, assessment, quality, education.