HUMAN SCALE SCHOOLS:  AN INDEPENDENT EVALUATION

INTRODUCTION

The Gulbenkian Foundation is offering grants to up to 50 secondary schools to enable them to design and implement human scale education projects.  The grants are being offered over a three year period to schools whose projects aim to

·         implement organisational and structural change to create small learning communities or mini-schools

·         implement developments based on human scale education in areas of  learning, student participation or local communities

·         create a human scale school as part of the Government’s Building Schools for the Future initiative.

In parallel with this, Human Scale Education (HSE), which was founded in 1985, is receiving funding from Gulbenkian Foundation, Esmeé Fairbairn Foundation and Paul Hamlyn Foundation to provide a framework of support for this initiative in the further development of human-scale secondary schools in the UK.  HSE and the Gulbenkian Foundation have also commissioned an evaluation of the projects by LC Research Associates.

AIMS

The overall aim of this independent and impartial evaluation is to enhance significantly our understanding of the potential and practice of human scale values and processes.  It will also add to the body of literature on change in human scale education.  It will expand and deepen knowledge and appreciation of the processes and practices involved in becoming a secondary school committed to human scale education.  From this, it should be noted that this research is not an evaluation of the initiative per se, but an in-depth study into five of the schools that have been involved in the project from the first year onwards.

The evaluation has four main objectives:

(a) to identify and examine changes in school policies, practices, structures and the physical environment, including architecture, that are associated with developments supported by grants from the Gulbenkian Foundation in five of the Human Scale School project schools;

(b) to understand the value positions underpinning the proposed changes identified in (a) above;

(c) to illuminate and illustrate the impact and effects of these changes in each of the schools; and

(d) to identify and explore the various factors that might account for the impact and effects brought about by each school’s involvement in the Human Scale Schools initiative.

METHODS

The evaluation will adopt a largely qualitative case study methodology.  The secondary schools selected for grants thus far reveal a diverse range of contexts, proposed projects and local priorities and the change agenda advanced by individual schools does not follow a standard formula.  The use of a mainly qualitative approach will therefore permit the research to be adaptive and responsive to the contrasting contexts and initiatives, whilst simultaneously addressing a common core of questions and issues.

In keeping with this approach, the main techniques of data collection will be individual interviews, paired discussions, the compilation of annual data on school-level indicators and the collection of key papers and documents.  In order to provide an analytical framework for the examination of the change process and its impact, the application of a logic model approach (McLaughlin and Jordan, 1999) to the evaluation will be implemented.

Baseline visits to five secondary schools will take place in January 2007.  Two further visits will take place early in 2008 and 2009, with a final visit to each school will at the end of 2009.  Interviews will be conducted with teachers, students and (on the final visit) parents, and they will aim to address the main objectives of the research.  Key issues to be explored will include the possible effects of the initiatives in the following categories:

• Staff/ student and student-student relationships
• Relationships between school/teacher and parent/carer 
• Quality of learning experience
• Student participation in school decision making/life of the school/culture
• Attitudes /motivation/disaffection towards school
• Teacher/student satisfaction
• Parental involvement/satisfaction
• Local community involvement
• Frame of values of participants, particularly teachers and adult staff

OUTPUTS

Interim and progress reports will be submitted to the project’s Steering and Advisory Groups throughout the evaluation and a final report will be available in 2010.

PERSONNEL

The evaluation will be carried out by John Harland and Barbara Mason, of LC Research Associates.

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