Evaluation: a process, not an event

Throughout my time as a school leader, and since, I have wrestled with the challenge of evaluation, in terms of measuring the impact of change, in a way which is meaningful and useful . Early in my career, such evaluation was very much viewed as an event, or events, that happened towards the end of a project, or piece of work, usually occurring towards the end of a school year. This was often a time filled with lots of scrabbling around looking for 'evidence' that could be put into some sort of report aimed at different different audiences. It felt stressful, concocted at times and often disconnected from the whole change agenda. Evaluation was a thing to be endured at the end of something else, with its main purpose consisting of proving you had been doing something to different people. Some of these would take what you gave them, and put that into their own 'evaluation report' for a cluster of schools, a local authority, or even a national system.

A major issue with such an approach, was that it gave very little reliable 'evidence' of what schools had been doing, never mind the impact of all their busyness. This would not change if we didn't move away from viewing evaluation as an event, and instead begin to see it as a process that was embedded into everything we did. A school leader's approach to evaluation will be mirrored in classrooms, and I well remember teachers scrambling around to provide me, and others, the evidence we were asking for. I remember doing the same myself as a teacher. For many teachers, evaluation was an event that took place in the summer term, just like Parents' Nights, Sports Days or School Trips. Another of the many 'things' that happen in schools that mark the passing of time, but which had questionable impact.

All this was to change for me when we started to use practitioner enquiry for school and professional development. Now we saw development and growth as part of a continuous process, not a series of events or 'things'. When such thinking began to be embedded in our practice, it changed our approach to everything, including evaluation. We recognised that evaluation needed to be a process embedded into everything we did, and should be thought about before we embarked on any changes planned for our practice. When we did this, it all began to make sense and evaluation began to feel a natural fit to what we were trying to do, and a lot less stressful, as it was ongoing and informed current and future actions. When evaluation is happening continuously, it stops being seen as a major event, but more as an integral part of the process of change. Evaluation processes shape the change process and are shaped by it. Nothing is fixed or set in stone, evaluation needs to evolve and respond to changes being experienced by individuals and schools.

Fast forward a few years and I am still thinking about evaluation, this time on behalf of Connect Scotland and some of their professional learning modules for teachers and schools. As part of this work, it quickly became apparent that lots of schools were still struggling with evaluation around their work with parents. Many schools were doing lots of positive work with parents, building relationships and working on improving engagement, but struggled with the evaluation of this work. What we were finding were schools trying to think about how they evaluate this great work, to inform their school community or local authority, but who were struggling to come up with much more than counting attendance numbers at events. Certainly, attendance at various parental events can be one evaluative indicator for schools and their leaders, but it is only one and provides a limited amount of useful or useable information. Evaluation should be formative. Providing evidence of where you are and the impacts you are having, as well as signposting the road ahead.

There appears to be two major problems, or stumbling blocks, for many schools. The first is the approach being taken, which still views evaluation as an event at the end of a process, rather than something thought about at the outset and then built into the work, and shaped by that work. The second is that schools seemed to lack a range of evaluation strategies or tools to employ throughout the process. Connect have tried to address both of these issues, and have been working with Janet Goodall to address this further. Meaningful evaluation doesn't have to be complex, and nor does all of it have to be done by teachers or school leaders, especially in the area of parental engagement.

Evaluation, done properly and thought about carefully, should not just mean more work or activity. It should involve us in working smarter by being able to connect and build evaluation into all our developmental processes. When we do this we can answer key questions. Where are we now? Where are we heading? How will we know if we have been successful? Where do we need to go next? With deep embedded evaluation practices, as a process, we are more likely to be able to answer those questions, as well as accumulate the evidence to support our answers. Keeping evaluation proportionate and manageable is absolute key. I would add that it has to be meaningful and useful too. If we are evaluating and collecting evidence for some other audience, we have misunderstood the importance of it to ourselves and our schools.

Having evidence, or data, to show others, should be a by-product of what we do, not a driver. We evaluate to better understand ourselves and our learners, not to 'prove' anything to anyone else. By understanding ourselves and our learners better, we are better able to keep building and improving
what we do from and informed position, rather than a fictional one we might like to present to others. Education and school development is too important to treat it like some aspects of social media, with everyone presenting themselves in ways that they would like others to see them. It is our professional responsibility to know ourselves well, faults and strengths, for how else can we honestly say where
we are, or know the impact we are having? Without proportionate and robust evaluation, who knows what improvements we are making, or the damage we may be doing?

The first step for this to happen, is that we have to recognise evaluation as a process, not an event.