Background: Since the late 1970s participatory approaches have been widely promoted to evaluate international development programs. However, there is no universal agreement of what is meant by participatory evaluation. For some evaluators, participatory evaluations involve the extensive participation of all stakeholder groups (from donor to…

This project evaluated the feasibility of a child-centred 24-week physical activity intervention. The "Play5" strategy encourages children to choose to play vigorously five times a day for about as long as school recess. The seven-year-old children were randomised to control (n = 176) or intervention groups (n = 132). Data were collected…

This fact sheet summarizes data gathered in the 2010 survey of National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant recipients. Conducted by EvaluATE, the evaluation resource center for the ATE program located at The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University, this was the eleventh annual survey of ATE projects and…

Every teacher can recall a range of experiences in professional development workshops. Some of these may have provided opportunities in which teachers felt engaged, empowered, and supported as learners, while others felt disconnected from practice. Although these authors recognize that workshops, particularly those with no follow-up support, are…

The Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning programme (SEAL), designed to develop children's social, emotional and behavioural skills in the primary school, was part of the Primary Behaviour and Attendance Pilot funded by the then Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and piloted in 25 Local Authorities in the UK. The data collected in the…

Sustainable development initiatives are proliferating in the US and Europe as engineering educators seek to provide students with knowledge and skills to design technologies that are environmentally sustainable. Many such initiatives involve students from the "North," or "developed" world building projects for villages or…

The purpose of this evaluation was to determine the effectiveness of an online reading teacher and literacy instructor training program. A mixed-method research design was used in conjunction with the improvement-focused model of program evaluation to help the researcher identify strengths and weaknesses of the program. Overall, data showed the…

Recent advocacy organization reports, Congressional hearings, and proposed federal legislation have called attention to the abusive use of physical restraint procedures in school settings. As a result, administrators and school officials wonder whether they should purchase "crisis intervention" training for staff and faculty members from outside…

This article examines the impact of a faculty professional development effort on the understanding, confidence, and attitudes of education faculty related to program assessment activities. We applied literature on the adoption of innovations, institutional effectiveness, and professional development to a case study of a series of workshops on…

Based on current theories of multimedia learning, we propose a strategy for learning from animations. Two different experimental studies were conducted in order to evaluate the strategy. In the first study, 22 sixth graders learned from an animation without the strategy while 21 students were encouraged to make use of the proposed strategy during…

This paper presents the author's comment on "Evaluation Field Building in South Asia: Reflections, Anecdotes, and Questions" by Katherine Hay. Hay raises a number of extremely relevant issues relating to evaluation field building in South Asia. In this paper, the author aims to underscore the importance of three priorities for initiating…

The need to play is primeval in human beings, at least as strong as the urge to fight. While the larger gaming community has traditionally focused on the fairly lucrative potential of exploiting the urge to fight in the form of violent and destructive war games, the "Serious Games" segment has become aware of the power of applying this…

Some families, parents and children included, may not be fully prepared or aware as they enter into the commitment of a dual-immersion language elementary education experience. One factor crucial for a dual-immersion program to meet its objectives, parents and students must commit to a minimum of five to six years of their elementary education to…

This evaluation study provides descriptive information about the implementation and outcomes of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC) program in West Virginia, from September 2011 through May 2012. The report draws on information from online surveys of directors of 24 CCLC programs and from school teachers of nearly 4,000…

Inquiry-guided learning (IGL) has widespread appeal in higher education as a suite of teaching strategies that promotes learning through students' increasingly independent investigation of questions, problems, and issues using the methods of inquiry of the disciplines. Framed as especially appropriate for research universities, IGL has been…