Departments and language programs often are asked to evaluate the efficacy of their own programs and make curricular decisions on the basis of evidence. This guide, designed to help language educators meet the needs of program evaluation and assessment often requested by their institutions, provides step-by-step advice to help language educators conduct evaluation and assessment and to show how it can lead to meaningful programmatic decisions and change. With discussions about evaluation planning, advice for selecting data-collection tools, explanations for data analysis, examples based on actual evaluations, and more, this book provides everything you need to complete a successful language program evaluation that will give educators useful data on which to base curricular decisions. This short book is practical and timely and will find an audience in instructors of all languages and all levels.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
John McE. Davis
Chapter 1. An Introduction to Useful and Used Evaluation in Language Education
John McE. Davis
Chapter 2. Best Practices for Langauge Program Evaluation Success
John McE. Davis
Chapter 3. Planning for Useful Evaluation: Users, Uses, Questions
Todd H. McKay and John McE. Davis
Chapter 4. Indentifying Indicators for Evaluation Data Collection
Francesca Venezia
Chapter 5. Selecting Methods and Collecting Data for Evaluation
Todd H. McKay and John McE. Davis
Chapter 6. Conducting Focus Groups for Evaluation
Lara Bryfonski
Chapter 7. Conducting Evaluation Interviews
Jorge Mendez Seijas, Janire Zalbidea, and Cristi Vallejos
Chapter 8. Questionnaires for Evaluation
Amy I. Kim and John McE. Davis
Chapter 9. Analyzing Evaluation Data
John McE. Davis
Chapter 10. Key Points to Remember for Useful Evaluation
John McE. Davis
Chapter 11. Example Evaluation Plan
Todd H. McKay
References
List of Contributors
Reviews
"Davis and McKay have created a user-friendly book that is well organized, clearly written, and full of examples—a book that provides a step-by-step guide for people who want to do useful language program evaluation that will truly be used to improve their program because the entire process focuses on stakeholder ownership."—JD Brown, Professor, University of Hawaii
"This is a timely and valuable contribution to the task of understanding and improving language programmes. The clear linkage between stakeholder involvement and decision-making within programme is a significant strand of the book, and the key to fostering better practice in the field. The focus on evaluation usefulness and use is detailed and sustained in ways that will guide the work of academics, teachers and managers of language programmes. The guidelines for evaluators on data collection methods, such as focus groups, interviews and questionnaires are clear and accessible.
Throughout this guide, the practical, step-by-step guidelines resonate with lessons learnt from the experience of evaluating language programmes."—Richard Kiely, Director, Postgraduate Taught Programmes,, University of Southampton, UK
About the Author
John McE. Davis is John McE. Davis is Research Scientist at the Center for English Language Learning and Assessment at the Educational Testing Service, USA. His research interests include language program evaluation, language assessment, and questionnaire research methods.
Todd H. McKay is a Ph.D. candidate in applied linguistics and research assistant with the Assessment and Evaluation Language Resource Center at Georgetown University. His research interests include language assessment, language program evaluation, and applied measurement, with emphases on the less commonly taught languages and language programs in South Asia.
