Flipped Classroom to Train the Evaluator for the Development of Adult Education Staff. The Experience of Edueval Project

Ensuring good quality of adult education services, with a special regard for socially, economically or culturally disadvantaged citizens, has been a key objective for the European Union since 2000. The economic and social crisis has made this objective an even more strategic one, thus prompting at an even sharper focus on the conditions required to facilitate the adult education services in the promotion of lifelong learning and social inclusion. The evaluation of adult education staff is one of these conditions; indeed, evaluation plays a crucial role in guiding changes in institutions, educational, and healthcare services. Within this framework, took place the EduEval Grundtvig project - Evaluation for the professional development of Adult Education Staff. It involved a partnership of 6 Universities from 5 different European countries. Its main focus was the evaluation of adult education professionals with the aim of drawing a new profile of evaluator who can support adult education staffs development. In order to reach this goal, the partnership fulfils firstly a desk research, clarifying the European framework of the adult educator’s evaluation, secondly a qualitative research, investigating the gap between European policies and evaluators’ everyday professional practice. Italian research involved 20 practitioners whose tasks include the evaluation of adult education staff. They were interviewed with semi-structured in-depth interviews [9]. Data confirmed that working in adult educational services requires generic and transversal skills, and more specific competences who relates to functions within the adult educational contexts. Based on the research findings, the partnership built up a pilot course to train the evaluator of adult education staff. It had a blended learning structure and was tested countrywide. Partners adapted the course to the particular features of the different national contexts. Italian team choose an active methodology. Flipped classrooms] were used to involve 14 professionals, allowing them to experience different evaluation’s tools, practices and situations under the trainer guide. While 20 classroom’s hours were spent in experiential activities, 10 hours of on line contents allowed to learn theory and to reflect upon it. The final survey that participants filled in shows that the course was useful, and its impact in their daily work life significant. Participants declared a remarkable interest to the “triangulation model” that EduEval proposed, in order both to understand and manage the evaluation complexity. This model articulates the evaluation of the context with external and self-evaluation. Participants also highlighted the importance of practising the tools and the methodologies proposed, and to reflect on their own evaluation practices. More time would have been necessary in order to exercise the complex skills required to evaluate an adult education staff and improve its development.