Research - UWI Education Evaluation Center
Dr. Jennifer Obidah is the director of the Education Evaluation Center at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, Barbados.
The Education Evaluation Center was created out of the development of the Educational Sector Enhancement Program (ESEP) with a contract being agreed to in 1999. Over the years the Center has been able to evaluate small components of the larger ESEP program. Dr. Obidah is proud of the work done so far by the Center and believes there is a legacy on which her team can build. The original plan for the Center in part, is to work with all the education ministries in the Caribbean. Dr Obidah states that there is the need to provide a large baseline data report that captures what education in Barbados “looks like”. In short: What has been the academic achievement of students over the last five years? What does the technology aspects look like in Barbados? Using existing data collected by the Ministry, CXC and the Department of Planning will help the Center to paint an accurate picture of the educational landscape of Barbados.
Long term the Center is pleased with the program being offered by the Audio Visual Aids Department- ‘Empowering Administrators in the Use of ICT’. Dr. Obidah particularly likes the interventions and workshops currently being conducted to empower administrators. Hand in hand with the Audio Visual Aids Department the Center will study the process of making schools more technologically viable. Research will be conducted as the process proceeds as opposed to looking at studying this area of ESEP after the fact or coming when the teachers have lost touch with the training to some degree. Dr. Obidah is excited about the concept born out of the ILP problem statement. In the future she determined that the AVA program is the type of work with which her team would prefer to be involved. She feels that in this format every aspect of the reform is studied and directly linked with an event that is occurring at the school so that the relevance is apparent and transparent.
Dr. Obidah feels that research is essential, especially in the field of education. There is so much that goes on in education especially in terms of people desirous of improving various educational systems. Rarely are there opportunities to study processes of improvement as they are being implemented. Many times schools are such centers of activity that depending on what occurs on a given day an administrator may feel he or she is not effective. Dr. Obidah states however, that, “The empowerment of administrators comes when they are part of the process of studying the reform implementation and its outcomes. Regardless of what is the outcome an administrator can assess what was done and determine how best to proceed based on scientific inquiry”.
Dr. Obidah believes that many times researchers are side-tracked from the human aspect of research by notions of objectivity, in the sense that scientific inquiry is devoid in some ways of a human face. She notes:
“In education it is imperative not to be divorced from human interactions. For example we may say anecdotally that administrators are intimidated by the technology or some other aspects of being administrators. The first part of any evaluative plan should be to test if indeed this is true. We can elaborate on this hypothesis in that if administrators are intimidated by technology it will follow that they will be reluctant to engage with the technology and furthermore, to fulfill their administrative duty of actually engaging their staff and students in technology. These actions would act as a hindrance to technology becoming a viable part of the teaching and learning process. In such cases, we have to humanize the challenges that administrators face even as we seek to change perceptions and behavior”.
Dr. Obidah is hoping to present a human face when her team goes into the schools to do research. Usually teachers and principals become intimidated by the statistical data and how it is presented. The Center will find/adopt modes of inquiry and entrees to engage and get the support of administrators. Their studies will be guided by the administrators’ desire to initiate change. It is the intention of the Center to work with schools to study issues that they deem important.
On the issue of student assessment Dr. Obidah prefers portfolio assessment where evaluation of students’ progress is not determined by a final score as in traditional assessment. The portfolio looks at the academic progress of the students as they move from one level to another. She stated that this type of assessment emphasizes different types of learning using theories such as Bloom’s Taxonomy. The portfolio assessment also allows for measurement of various types of progress made by students at different stages, and not only using one indicator, such as a test score.
For more information on the UWI Education Evaluation Centre visit: http://www.uwichill.edu.bb/eec/
Author’s comments
Originally the Education Evaluation Center did not feature very highly in the attempt to resolve the principal issues as highlighted in this ILP Problem Statement. It was as a result of investigations and ‘research’ to meet the requirements of this ILP that I realized the critical role of this unit to administrators and indeed all stakeholders in educational reform in Barbados. I am heartened that workshops conducted with ESEP Phase 2 schools as a result of this ILP have been positively recognized by Dr. Obidah and her team but they will be working with the participants of these workshops to enable continuity and measurement of the outcomes.
