Critical and formative evaluation in secondary education students.

This study describes the approaches that a private educative institution has about teaching, learning and assessment process. Its curriculum includes a rigorous document with evaluation policies, the SIEE (Institutional Assessment System) is offering a formative evaluation, critical thinking and analytical formation on students. The research was directed finding what kind of assessment is done, student`s considerations about assessment, and motivation for learning. A qualitative descriptive method was used (Hernández et all, 2010). And the analyses includes descriptive statistics, questionnaires, open interviews, observation protocols, and literature analysis. The paper concludes that some teachers are not involved in the contextual dynamics of learning, nor do they take into account the interests of students. So, this leads to warning that today's teachers must be updated and conduct teaching through dynamic and motivational research strategies. In this case, the proposed transformative pedagogical model and critical formative assessment will have sense on students and therefore, in our society.

A Behavioral Design to Reform Italy’s Evaluation Policy

Drawing on the extensive ethnographic research I conducted on Italy’s performance evaluation system, this article highlights the cognitive biases associated with evidence use in decision making and institution working. Framing effects, status quo bias, motivated reasoning, and tacit conflicts between personal and organizational interests were only some of the behavioral phenomena policy makers, managers, and evaluators showed to limit their exposure to performance information. Integrating behavioral findings with theories of governance, evaluation utilization, and critical evidence–informed policymaking, this article discusses behavioral reform strategies to overcome (i) tacit conflicts of interests among evaluators, (ii) the compliance mentality with performance assessment among managers, and (iii) adversarial relationships between courts and administrative agencies as well as polarized politics with respect to evidence use and experts’ behavior. A behavioral design is relevant to reform evaluation policies, especially in countries where performance regimes have been criticized, contested, resisted, and/or perceived as red tape and surveillance mechanisms.

MIS faculty collaboration in research and journal publication

PurposeThis study applies D3.js and social network analysis (SNA) to examine the impact of collaboration patterns, research productivity patterns and publication patterns on the Ministry of Education (MOE) evaluation policies across all Management Information Systems (MIS) departments in Taiwan.Design/methodology/approachThis study first retrieved data from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MOST) website from 1982 to 2015, the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) website, the Web of Science (WOS) website and Google Scholar. Then it applied power-law degree distribution, cumulative distribution function, weighted contribution score, exponential weighted moving average and network centrality score to visualize the MIS collaborations and research patterns.FindingsThe analysis concluded that most MIS professors focused primarily on SCIE-/SSCI-/TSSCI-/core indexed journals after 2005. Professors from public universities were drawn to collaboration and publishing in high-quality-based journals, while professors from private universities focused more on quantity-based publications. Female professors, by contrast, have a slightly higher single-authorship publication rate in SCIE-/SSCI-/TSSCI-indexed journals than do male professors. Meanwhile, professors in northern Taiwan emphasized quantity-based journal publications, while a focus on quality was more typical in the south. Furthermore, National Cheng Kung University has the most single-authorship or intrauniversity publications in SCIE-/SSCI-/TSSCI-/core journals, and National Sun Yat-Sen University published more SSCI-indexed articles than SCIE-indexed articles. All of these findings show that there is an explicit relation between MOE evaluation policies and MIS faculty members' collaboration/publication strategies.Originality/valueThe above findings explain how MOE evaluation policies affected MIS faculty members' collaboration and publication strategies in Taiwan, and the authors hope that such findings can constitute a resource for understanding and characterizing networking with MIS departments in Taiwan.

El año que nos volvimos insostenibles: Análisis de la producción española en Sustainability (2020)

The journal Sustainability, published by MDPI, was the journal that published the most papers by researchers from Spanish institutions in 2020. This justifies a detailed examination of the Spanish scientific production in this journal. At the same time, the work of editing monographic issues in which papers with Spanish authors have been published is analyzed. For this purpose, we have identified whether each paper belongs to regular or to special issues of the journal, identifying whether the author of the paper is also editor of the monograph, or a university colleague. The nationality of the editors was also studied. The subject matter of the articles and their belonging to the area of the journal were analyzed. Most of the papers published by Spanish authors were published in special issues (81.6%), mainly edited by authors of the same nationality (63.1%). It is also found that there is an important production carried out by the same editor of the monograph, or by colleagues from the same institution. It is also found that a substantial number of works published in Sustainability (42.3%) have minimal or no relationship with the subject of sustainability. Finally, the implications of these findings are discussed under the light of the publication strategies of Spanish researchers and the science evaluation policies applied in Spain. The main controversial aspects identified have to do with the publication of papers on other subjects, the value of publishing in monographs, which in some cases could be considered as inbreeding, and the short editing times. Resumen La revista Sustainability, de la editorial MDPI, fue en 2020 la revista que publicó más trabajos de investigadores de instituciones españolas. Esto justifica un examen detallado de la producción científica española en dicha revista. Se analiza también la labor de edición de números monográficos en los cuales se han publicado trabajos con autores españoles. Para ello se ha identificado la pertenencia de cada trabajo a números especiales y a números regulares de la revista, identificando si el autor del trabajo es también editor del monográfico, o compañero de universidad. Igualmente se estudia la nacionalidad de los editores. Se analiza la temática de los artículos y su pertenencia al área de la revista. La mayor parte de los trabajos publicados por autores españoles se difundieron en números especiales (81,6%), principalmente editados por autores de la misma nacionalidad (63,1%). Se ve asimismo que existe una importante producción realizada por el mismo editor del monográfico, o por colegas de la misma institución. También se encuentra que un número sustancial de trabajos publicados en Sustainability (42,3%) guarda una relación mínima o inexistente con la temática de la Sostenibilidad. Finalmente, se discuten las implicaciones de estos hallazgos a la luz de las estrategias de publicación de los investigadores españoles y de las políticas de evaluación de la ciencia aplicadas en España. Los principales aspectos polémicos identificados tienen que ver con la publicación de trabajos de otros temas, el valor de la publicación en monográficos que en algunos casos podrían ser considerados como endogamia y los reducidos tiempos de edición.

Leaders’ Negotiation of Teacher Evaluation Policy in Immigrant-Serving Schools

This paper examines how school leaders working within schools serving immigrant English Learners negotiate teacher evaluation policies, including how they influence compliance with mandated policies, communicate those policies to teachers, and guide implementation within their professional communities. We explore how a leader in a school with positive outcomes negotiates external policies to support authentic professional growth and maximize learning opportunities for immigrant ELs. In addition, we draw on data from a comparison school that also serves a high proportion of ELs, but where policies have been enacted in ways that focus on compliance, increase anxiety, and add little value to EL students. In doing so, we show how leaders can mitigate the unintended consequences of mandated policies by addressing teachers’ uncertainty and anxieties, while reaffirming humanizing institutional practices that honor the local knowledge of teachers and deepen teachers’ collective responsibility for immigrant youth.

Gender sensitive research in adult education: Looking back and looking forward to explore what is and what is missing in the research agenda

Despite legislation, policies and practice, and while some progress has been made in many countries, there are still no countries who have achieved a hundred per cent gender equality (Gender Equality Index, EIGE, 2019). Over the years this has included several supranational agreements and mandatory regulations signed by countries such as the Convention of the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, 1979), the Platform of Beijing (1995), the Istanbul Convention (2011), and more recently the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015), among others. The failure of these initiatives indicate that gender inequality, discrimination and prejudice suffered by women are embedded in structural unequal power relations. The ultimate goal of the ‘gender mainstreaming principle’ is the integration of a gender perspective into the preparation, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation policies, regulatory measures and spending programmes (including research ones), with a view to promoting gender equality between women and men, and combating discrimination.

Letter: A call for a radical change in research evaluation in Spain

This letter is a call to the Spanish scientific authorities to abandon current research evaluation policies, which are based on an excessive and indiscriminate use of bibliometric indicators for nearly all areas of scientific activity. This narrow evaluation focus is especially applied to assess the individual performance of researchers. To this end, we first describe the contexts in which the journal impact factor (JIF) and other bibliometric indicators are being used. We then consider the toxic effects of this abuse of indicators. Finally, we outline some significant transformations and initiatives being introduced in various academic fields and regions of the world. These international initiatives offer alternatives to bibliometrics that can improve evaluation processes, and we urge political leaders in Spain to adopt and develop them.

Medidas de Tendência Central: Análise da Qualidade das Questões do ENEM de 2016 a 2018

ResumoO Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio (ENEM) tem se constituido como uma das principais políticas de avaliação da qualidade da educação básica brasileira. A expansão do exame e as atribuições a ele investidas tornaram imprescindíveis as discussões acerca da sua estrutura e qualidade. Com o intuito de contribuir para esta temática, este artigo tem o objetivo de analisar a qualidade de 11 itens de Matemática das provas do ENEM de 2016 a 2018, que se referem às Medidas de Tendência Central: média aritmética simples e ponderada, mediana e moda. Para isto, adotou-se uma metodologia predominantemente quantitativa e exploratória, desenvolvida a partir da aplicação de técnicas psicométricas a uma amostra representativa de participantes do exame. Os resultados apontaram para itens adequados e bem estruturados, que privilegiam o raciocínio lógico e a interpretação. A análise pedagógica indicou para a comum confusão entre os conceitos de média aritmética simples e ponderada, que representam a grande maioria dos itens analisadas. Espera-se que os resultados obtidos possam esclarecer alguns conceitos da psicometria e auxiliar no processo de ensino e aprendizagem de estatística na educação básica. Palavras-chave: Medidas de Tendência Central. Psicometria. Análise de Itens. ENEM. AbstractThe National High School Examination (ENEM) has become one of the most of the main Brazilian quality evaluation policies in the field of basic education. The expansion and attributions invested in the test make indispensable the discussions about its structure and quality. In order to contribute to this theme, we propose to analyze 11 Maths questions to ENEM from 2016 to 2018 and related to Measures of Central Tendency: arithmetic mean; weighted arithmetic mean, median and mode. It was used a quantitative and exploratory methodology, developed through psychometrics methods applied to a significant sample of students that made the exam. The results pointed to well-structured items, that favor logical reasoning and interpretation and that have an excellent ability discriminate groups with different levels of. Its highlight the confusion between concepts of arithmetic mean and weighted arithmetic mean, that represent the most of the questions analyzed. It is hoped that this research may help clarify some concepts of psychometry and can assist in the teaching-learning process of statistics in basic education.Keywords: Measures of Central Tendency. Psychometry. Item Analysis. ENEM.

Analysis of Evaluation Policies in the Philanthropic Sector

Since 2007, two taxonomies have been proposed to identify the components of evaluation practice that may be specified in an evaluation policy. Little is known, however, about how these taxonomies align with evaluation policies developed by philanthropic foundations. Through thematic analysis, this article first compares 12 foundation evaluation policies to the components of the two existing taxonomies. Based on this analysis, an updated taxonomy is proposed, with 11 components to inform evaluation policies in the philanthropic sector and beyond. The 12 foundation policies are then reexamined in relation to the new taxonomy to compare their length, breadth, and depth. This article concludes with implications for practice and suggestions for future research.