| Contents |
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4... | Appendix 1 |
| Appendix 2 part 1 | Appendix 2 part 2 | Appendix 2 part 3 |

Chapter Four

Evaluation

Try to think about curriculum work like this as a recommended way of life for students, teachers, parents, ancillary staff and others or, more simply, as a set of suggestions about how people should spend their time together. If you can regard the following educational proposals like that, then you have the key to their evaluation. Evaluation will then raise questions about quality of life, and answering such questions will require collecting a variety of judgments. Students will have views to offer; so will colleagues, parents, visitors and others who were affected by or witnessed what went on.

Evaluating will then involve putting together a portfolio of evidence which portrays what happened as what was planned was put into practice. later that evidence will make it possible to draw justified conclusions about effects.

Information you might want to collect in a portfolio of evidence could include:

• records of students' reactions
• brief student questionnaires notes of interviews
• notes of interviews
• comments from class discussions
• photographs taken during activities and while on excursions
• notes on reactions from parents
• brief summaries of reactions from colleagues
• excerpts from your own diary
• examples of students' work

The purpose of systematically gathering evidence about practical effects might be:

• to get a balanced account of reactions of members of the school community to your efforts to improve respect for human rights
• to help you know if you are improving your skill at handling controversial issues in the classroom
• to monitor attitude changes
• to give an account to the broader school community (parents and friends) of your results
• to determine whether or not what was done led to a better understanding of, or a greater concern for, human rights issues on the part of the students and other members of the school community
• to know what activities to repeat next time and what to change
• to demonstrate how goal-based, descriptive assessment of this kind works in practice

What purpose you have in mind will determine what evidence you choose to use from your portfolio. Unless you are reasonably thorough and consistent about keeping track of what you do, however, you may find you have little more than your own personal impressions and recollections to go on. Having evidence about a variety of judgments will enable you to check the accuracy of your own judgment.

Extracts taken from the portfolio of evidence of one teacher (he called it his 'journal') who took part in the Human Rights Commission's Schools Program for 1985 are included below. The teacher who compiled this portfolio was particularly systematic in recording what happened. In the selection which follows you will find examples of:

• a child's written work
• Likert scales which were used to solicit children's responses to various activities
• a record of a parent's reaction to the work her child was doing at school
• a record of the teacher's observation of his students during an activity
• extracts from a summary of a staff meeting

These examples indicate the kind of evidence you might gather yourself.

Incident (1)
In order to get the message (about what we were doing) home to the parents involved, the children were asked to go home and ask their Mum and Dad what they thought their rights were.

Some interesting things came up like: 'being able to watch Sons and Daughters in peace', and 'being able to go to the toilet without being disturbed' and 'not having to wash up after cooking the meal'.

One child's report on this activity read:

When the students were asked to give their impressions of what they had done, one filled out the response sheet as follows:

An interesting aftermath of these lessons was that one Mum came to me and complained that now her son is continually demanding his rights. I tried to explain that rights and responsibilities go together and that perhaps her son had not grasped this. Perhaps more later?

Incident (2)
Following a role-play about avoiding arguments I suggested to the children that they might like to go and talk to someone in the class who they didn't normally talk to. After a few grumbles we paired off and in all but one case, the conversation flowed.

The class was so pleased with this activity that they want to do it again! Some prejudices can be broken down easily.

Incident (3)
At our November staff meeting I informed the staff about the human rights program I had been running in the classroom. Some teachers were worried that it was another subject that we had to teach but I showed them how many activities could be fitted into existing subject areas. One teacher was worried that it was all a communist plot to undermine our society; I tried to explain that there was no justification for that!!
Another teacher summarised a number of the ways she gathered evidence as follows:

In order to ensure accurate evaluation of class sessions, my own impressions were written down as soon as the session had ended. I wrote these impressions at the end of my lesson plans. I tried to be honest in my evaluations, of both myself and the children. I believe I achieved this. If a lesson did not achieve the original aims, I stated so in my evaluation. On the other hand, if the lesson was successful, I wrote so, and tried to find reasons for such success.

On three occasions I asked children to fill out questionnaires, asking children if they enjoyed the lesson and if they learnt anything. There was a scale from 1-5, and they were to choose, the number which explained their feelings. Lines were provided, if they wished to explain their feelings further. Most of the children filled all of these lines. I gave the children the option of leaving the sheet anonymous but most of the children preferred to write their names on it. I believe that these questionnaire sheets give the teacher a much greater understanding of what the children gained from the session.

The questionnaire sheets were used for the preliminary sessions on 'Blind trust', 'Children's rights' and 'Who are you'. These sheets proved to be very valuable. I also produced an evaluation sheet for the preliminary activity, 'Who are you', where I recorded the contribution of members of the class. This became very valuable for later sessions, as I was made aware of the children who were dominating the conversation.

Current thinking on evaluation and assessment is different in the different education systems, as one would expect. There is, however, a general shift these days away from 'testing' towards the sort of approach discussed above. The pendulum could swing back at any time. You will have your own idea regardless of how best to assess what is going on, and the mix of student versus teacher, objective' versus 'subjective', goal-based versus discursive evaluation strategies relevant in your case. There is no shortage of advice on these issues. Since human rights teaching covers such a wide range of subjects in content terms, and is as much a process as a product anyway, advice is only relevant in the light of what you are trying to do. This may change as you go along e.g. you may start by looking at a specific human rights issue, only to discover that to do justice to that issue you have to look at how you teach, your classroom relationships, and whole school policies. 'Evaluation' and 'assessment' will change then, too. 

| Contents |
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4... | Appendix 1 |
| Appendix 2 part 1 | Appendix 2 part 2 | Appendix 2 part 3 |