When considering community impacts of outdoor education (OE), youth are community members, leaders, and experts who can and should be meaningfully involved in the design and evaluation of OE programs and research that impact them. Ensuring youth have agency in these processes can create opportunities for building community (Brennan, 2008), making…

A sense of belonging and wellbeing at school influences educational and health outcomes. Here we widen the traditional focus of Assessment News to focus on the use of student wellbeing data in schools. We discuss the Wellbeing@ School (W@S) toolkit that is freely available to support schools to self-review as they examine and monitor student…

Commonly described as youth-led or youth-driven, the youth-adult partnership (Y-AP) model has gained increasing popularity in out-of-school time (OST) programs in the past two decades (Larson, Walker, & Pearce, 2005; Zeldin, Christens, & Powers, 2013). The Y-AP model is defined as "the practice of (a) multiple youth and multiple…

Within the SWIFT framework, the Inclusive Policy Structure and Practice domain addresses the need for a supportive, reciprocal partnership between the school and its district or local educational agency. Therefore, intentional and effective policy decision-making processes are integral to SWIFT implementation. Such processes create opportunities…

This article will focus on the potential role for youth evaluation advisory groups within youth grant-making organizations and networks. The main elements to be discussed include the formation of the network, the training program elements, some specific examples of efforts by young people to create and strengthen evaluation within their YACs…

Out-of-wedlock pregnancy among adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa is a major concern, because of its association with health, social, psychological, economic and demographic factors. This article describes the development of the Teenage Mothers Project, a community-based intervention to improve psychological and social well-being of unmarried…

Research on the nature of and support for systemic sustainable innovation with ICT is converging with research on policy implementation and studies of school change and improvement to highlight the complex interplay of personal and contextual factors that enable and constrain innovation. In each of these fields, leadership has been found to play a…

Museum leaders around the country are in the midst of examining and changing their business models in response to new economic realities. Museum educators have an opportunity to play a leading role in this endeavor. To do so educators must understand the relationship between money and mission. For too long there has been a belief that the…

There have been many competent evaluations of youth civic engagement projects. Our work differs from those in assumptions, purposes, goals, methods, activities, and findings for use in evaluation capacity building and program improvement, theoretical and conceptual clarity, and decision-making. Typically, evaluations have focused on predetermined…

This article discusses the planning, implementation, and evaluation of a deliberative public issues forum held at North Carolina State University in early 2008. The forum itself was a part of a larger university strategic planning process. In spite of tight time constraints, the planning team made a decision to tailor the forum according to…

Discusses the development of evaluation's collective capacity and offers an analysis of ways members of the evaluation community can work to build collective strength. These include better efforts to educate evaluation clients. (SLD)

The use of evaluation findings for program improvement and decision making was explored with the philosophy that different levels of information use occur--from altering perceptions of a program, to influencing major decisions about it. The strategy of deliberately involving potential information users such as clients, sponsors, and other…

In the evaluation of a major university's effort to extend its resources in support of volunteer development, the program decisionmakers' involvement went beyond the usual limits. The program advisory council participated in the design of data collection instruments and the interviewing of clients. The advantages and disadvantages are described.…

Describes a multiyear formative evaluation of six Florida schools involved in the Shared Decision Making and Restructuring Project, highlighting one school's successful efforts. Ethnographic and interview data were used to examine work histories, verify achievements, and identify stumbling blocks. The successful school had a well-defined core…

Evaluation processes and procedures for a collaborative teacher education program are contrasted to those typically used in a cooperative teacher education program. The research method used to set generic collaborative preservice teacher objectives in professional knowledge and educational beliefs is described. The two-year design will use pre-…