شیوه ها و چالش ها در ارزیابی برنامه آموزشی در منطقه آسیا_اقیانوس آرام : نتایج حاصل از یک مطالعه دلفی

While educational program evaluation has become more important in recent years because of increasing governmental demands for accountability, little is known about the development of and issues in regard to this topic in the Asia-Pacific region. The findings from a Delphi study conducted in a number of relevant countries are provided in this article. Thirty panelists participated in three rounds of iterations to identify current status, challenges, and concerns in the near future. The results should be of value to educational evaluators, researchers, and decision makers.

As the demand for accountability continues to increase, educational program evaluation (EPE) has become more important. To understand where the field is, numerous studies have been conducted in Western countries (Weiss, 1998; Worthen, Sanders, & Fitzpatrick, 2004), but little is known about EPE in the Asia-Pacific region (Mohandas, Wei, & Keeves, 2002). To that end, we used the Delphi technique to study what is happening now and what might take place in the future in this part of the world as determined by a knowledgeable panel of experts.

Our findings are suggestive of the current nature of and challenges for EPE in the Asia-Pacific region. They should be helpful to evaluators, researchers, and decision makers for policy formation, the implementation of evaluation, and for the training of evaluators. They may also generalize to other parts of the world where evaluation is more in nascent or early stages of development. While the diversity of opinion for current status, strengths, weaknesses, and challenges of EPE demonstrated some inconsistency in EPE in the region, there seemed to be progress toward a profession. As for the problems/challenges encountered, the lack of experienced evaluators and sufficient funding were pronounced. Additionally, enhancing the usefulness of evaluation results, establishing its credibility, and improving the quality of evaluation were major challenges for the field. Lastly, the western influence on EPE development in the Asia-Pacific area fit with the observations of Mohandas et al. (2002) and Straton (2001). Yet several cultural traditions (governmental dominance in evaluation practices, stress on assessing student academic performance) seemed to shape the contours of EPE in the Asia-Pacific region. Those unique characteristics might be an interesting avenue for further exploration.