aes19 International Evaluation Conference

Rory Sudfelt (Education Review Office), Sankar Ramasamy (Education Review Office, NZ), Barbie Mavor (Education Review Office, NZ), Tess Livingstone (Education Review Office, NZ)

For many evaluations their primary purpose is the judgement of value. However, value can also be created through interactions between the evaluators and the stakeholders, during an evaluation. Patton (2008) said process use of evaluation enhances achievement of program outcomes while also meeting evaluation information needs. This presentation will focus on how a process use of evaluation helped to create value for both evaluation stakeholders and evaluators during a two phased, mixed-methodology, evaluation.

The focus will be on a formative evaluation, which used a survey for the first phase, and case studies on selected schools for the second phase. The evaluation looked at how New Zealand schools were progressing with implementing new curriculum content.

Value will be discussed as an exchange of knowledge between evaluators and stakeholders that fostered enlightenment by both unpacking 'what's in the box'. Stakeholders' enlightenment was through discovering and unpacking, with evaluators, their journey of implementing the new curriculum content. Evaluators' enlightenment was through 'unpacking the black box' of a theory of change through case studies. The case studies tested if the conditions for effective implementation, inferred from the initial survey, reflect how schools implemented the curriculum content.

The presentation will discuss the benefits for evaluators and stakeholders of process use evaluation. The presentation will be useful for anyone starting to, or wanting a different perspective on, working with formative evaluation and mixed-method methodologies.

Value will also be discussed in the context of developing new evaluators' capacity in formative and process use, evaluations, and mixed-method methodologies.