Abstract
The completion of two school-based evaluation reports at a Catholic High School in the ACT highlighted the need for support structures both for evaluating staff and for the management of an evaluation report. The writer (a school principal) felt a need to review school-based evaluations in a more professional manner, and to ensure that evaluations were managed with greater support for the staff involved. In the absence of known Australian checklists, designed to review school-based evaluations, two recognised evaluation checklists, those of Russell and Maling-Keepes, are tested as instruments of review, by applying them to the two school evaluation reports. Four evaluation reviews are documented, in all. The main purposes of this research were:(1) to determine the merits of the completed evaluations by applying the checklists of Russell and Maling-Keepes,
(2) to test the relevance of the evaluation checklists of Russell and Maling-Keepes as instruments of review at the school level,
(3) in the light of this research, to be in a better position to recommend
a) a suitable review method for use by Catholic
School Principals,
b) support structures, both at a system level and a school level, to assist the development of school-based evaluations.
Information Gathered
The information that was gathered in the course of this Field Study took three main forms:
(1) information pertaining to the two evaluation checklists that were used as review instruments for the secondary evaluation of two school-based evaluation reports. The work of Russell, and then Maling-Keepes, was drawn on to ascertain the context of the elements of their evaluation designs, which were applied to two Evaluation Reports,
(2) a detailed analysis of two school-based evaluation reports, involving St Francis Xavier High School, Florey - first, the Girls’ Physical Education Evaluation Report, and then the Pastoral Needs’ Evaluation Report, indicated how the Reports measured against the criteria of Russell and Maling-Keepes,
(3) research related to responsibility-based, school level evaluations.
Findings
The findings from this research relate to:
(1) an assessment of the suitability of two evaluation checklists as instruments of review,
(2) an assessment of the merits of two completed school-based evaluation reports,
(3) a suggested review checklist based on the four documented reviews in the Field Study,
(4) recommendations relating to system level evaluation policy directed to the CEO,
(5) recommendations regarding structures, both system and school level, to assist the completion of school-based evaluation reports of good quality and usefulness.
| Date of Award | 1986 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |