Abstract:

This abstract aims at presenting part of the results obtained by the Grundwig Project called ''EDUEVAL'', Evaluation for the adult education staff'', funded with the EU support. Such project started at the beginning of January 2014 and it was oriented towards the exploration of the complexity of the Evaluation regarding the Education of the adult people, in order to define a curriculum suitable to train professionals during the initial and in-service training. Many activities, from research to workshop to pilot training course, have been developed using different methods, both qualitative and quantitative. A special workshop has been implemented using the psycho-social method and it was dedicated to the participatory and hermeneutic evaluation of the work of the educators. Participatory evaluation (Cousins, Chouinard, 2012) is a kind of evaluation that actively involves participants looking for the meaning of their actions, practices and procedures. It consists in an hermeneutic evaluation inasmuch this research of the meaning goes deeply into the hidden dynamics when using psychoanalytical approach. The workshop has been made in a large Socio-educational Cooperative Company, that works with disabled people. Fifteen educators participated in the partecipatory and hermeneutic evaluation workshop using psychoanalitycal approach (Hinshelwood, 2013, Hollway, Jefferson, 2013). The paper will describe the theoretical and methodological foundations of the approach used and it will express the analysis of the psychosocial dynamics and the reflections that went through the evaluation experience. The coordinator of the workshop asked to the work group to evaluate its educational quality in the work with disabled people, their families and their colleagues. He asked to reflect about the way of functioning as an educational staff, what kind of pedagogical theories and models they adopted when in conctact with the final users, if the group was open to the entrance of new colleagues or final users, what kind of power of membership they were able to take on, what kind of relationship with the leadership they used to establish, etc. Through psycho-social approach (Clarke, Hoggett, 2009; Reid, West, 2014) it was found out the difficulty to start reflecting about themselves as competent and active professionals because they were not used to self-evaluate their work and their way of functioning as an educational staff. Usually, they were exposed to external evaluations, that looked at the system of procedures followed by the Company but it did not look deeply through into the psychosocial dynamics and the complexity of the educational relationship with the final users. The conclusion underlines that, in order to fully understand a situation and verify the quality of an educational experience, it is necessary to sum up different kinds of evaluation. In our Edueval Project we speak of a Triangulation Method of Evaluation, stating that three typologies of evaluation are needed to completely understand a context: the context evaluation, the self-evaluation, the external evaluation. The self-evaluation can be conducted with different methods, among which it is included the psycho-social method that is presented here as one of the most effective and profound. Because of such characteristics this kind of participatory and hermeneutic evaluation is particularly suitable for the professional development of the educators.

Keywords:

Evaluation, Development, Psychoanalysis.