Stakeholders’ shifting values in an evaluation of a literacy professional development programme

Abstract

The author uses her experience as an evaluator for a literacy professional development programme with urban elementary schools in the United States to illustrate failures and successes with negotiating values and value judgements. Values are defined here as ‘the basis of criteria that inform the judgement of merit, worth, or significance of a program’, and value judgements are an assertion regarding the merit, worth or significance of the programme based on a process of weighing the evidence in relation to the value criteria. In the example, the author worked from what Schwandt called a ‘descriptive view of valuing’, to describe the views and experiences of the programme from a variety of perspectives in an effort to guide stakeholders in making value judgements about the programme. The evaluator refrained from being the sole authority that made value judgements and did not assume that prescriptive criteria could be reached among stakeholders. The author offers her reflections on the process as well as discussion questions for readers.

HealthLit4Kids: teacher experiences of health literacy professional development in an Australian primary school setting

“…Further, they indicated valuing HL education: ‘I believe exposing children to the concept of HL is very important, needs to be ongoing and really embedded across our whole school!’ Many teachers reported being unaware of the concept of HL prior to the workshops, thus, it could be suggested that engagement in the programme led to an appreciation for the importance of education that supports HL development. The significance of these findings cannot be understated, as teachers are more likely to teach concepts that they consider valuable ( Kallemeyn, 2019 ). This implies that their engagement with the PD increased the likelihood of teachers incorporating HL into their lessons.…”

Values in conflict in cross-cultural architectural encounters

“…However, evaluators encounter such differences in their work in many contexts. Feinstein (2019) provides an example of values differences in an agricultural project in Honduras; Ikin and McClenaghan (2019) do so in the New South Wales government education system; Kallemeyn (2019) in a literacy development program; King (2019) in a women’s economic empowerment program. Beyond individual programs, evaluators have values different from those of project managers; workers in large organisations have different values from those of sole practitioners; a person from a different ethnic, political or national community may have different values than one’s own community of origin.…”