Modelling the influences of evaluation on school principals: Towards evaluation capacity building

Abstract

School reviews form part of many school systems' evaluation frameworks, most often with the dual purpose of accountability and improvement. With some modifications, such reviews also have potential as evaluation-capacity-building activities. This article demonstrates how to create evaluation capacity building by combining formative and summative evaluation in school reviews that can deliver both accountability and school improvement. Using a traditional school-review structure as a starting-point, a new school-review strategy was developed that engaged school principals as evaluators in ways that boosted evaluation capacity in their institutions. Two groups of principals were studied. From the case study that ensued it was found that principals who advised only as team members in other principals' schools primarily engaged in single-loop learning. On the other hand, principals in the second group had to understand and apply criteria in the evaluation of their own schools, design evaluation strategies and techniques, and later reflect critically on the quality of evaluation practices and capacities in order to improve the values and assumptions influencing their own practices. This group demonstrated engagement in an integrated and experiential learning cycle of experiencing, reflecting, thinking and acting, and hence double-loop learning. In other words, the enhanced capacity of this latter group of principals included new skills, knowledge and understandings that became embedded in the culture and practices of their schools. This article breaks new ground by establishing the limitations of a composite model of evaluation influence derived from current literature. Further, it uses empirical data from field trials to propose a new model that emphasises the role of catalytic values and double-loop learning in situations where leaders become transformational and formative evaluators in empowered communities of practice.