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Evaluating and Assessing have long been central
issues in Adult and Continuing Education, both from an institutional and
a pedagogical point of view. There are two concerns: accountability and
improvement. Evaluation and Assessment have always been closely linked,
but in different ways. For a long time, the only way to evaluate an
education provider was the assessment of the learners: how many students
passed the exams? In training schemes for unemployed people, the
criteria of evaluation was the number of learners finding a job, etc....
With the quality management approach, the criteria
for evaluation changed completely and focussed more on the actual
process of teaching. So, the focus on evaluation took place at the very
beginning of the process. Defining objectives meant also defining
criteria and indicators to measure how much the objectives were reached.
So, evaluation of the education or training programme and assessment of
the learners were clearly separate.
In the new context of the Knowledge Society and
Lifelong Learning, the situation is different, and the boundary between
evaluation and assessment more fragile. First of all, as far as the
reference is now Lifewide Learning, we must take into account not only
the education or training providers, but also all the forms (formal,
non-formal, informal...) and all the locations (school, family,
enterprise, associations, trade-unions, media, etc...) where learning
takes place. The consequence is that the only place where you can
measure this knowledge is the learner himself, who becomes, in Lifelong
Learning, the very centre of the system. The other consequence is that
now, all the European Union documents (e.g. EQF or ECVET documents) put
the emphasis on the learning outcomes.
All this confirms that evaluation and assessment
are key aspects of adult and continuing education and are, for the same
reasons, such complex issues.
This workshop will try to address the following
questions:
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What do evaluation and assessment mean in the new
context of the Knowledge Society and Lifelong Learning?
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How can we evaluate education and training
programmes in this context?
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How can we assess non-formal and informal learning?
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Which new competences are needed?
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What are the consequences for professionals of
adult and continuing education?
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