Hello! I’m Leigh M. Tolley, Assistant Professor of Secondary Education in the College of Education & Human Development at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Although I am not currently an evaluator by trade, evaluation is still a sizeable part of the work that I do. It is omnipresent in accreditation efforts and program reviews with my colleagues; preparing and supervising undergraduate preservice teachers; teaching courses to graduate-level students who are currently employed as educators; and supporting experienced teachers that are mentoring their preservice, novice, and seasoned peers.
While thinking about proposal ideas to align with the Evaluation 2023 conference theme, The Power of Story, I have been considering who gets to tell their story in all aspects of teacher education. Whose story is being told in preparation programs, classroom teaching and mentoring, professional development, and everything in between?
Lesson Learned:
No experience? No problem! We often look to the “experts” and major decision-makers when learning about programs and evaluating their impacts and/or efficaciousness. What about checking in with those who are newer to the programs, those who have not been as successful in it, or those who came to the program in a non-traditional way? What stories can they tell us about their experiences, including what drew them to this program, their initial responses to it, and how they perceive its usefulness to their goals?
Lesson Learned:
Listen to understand, not to reply. When we incorporate the voices of everyone involved in a program, rather than just major stakeholders, we can learn much more about the context in which our evaluation is taking place. What shared knowledge exists? What are the aspects of the program that are perceived to be most and least valuable? How could evaluation findings be shared in a way that they are accessible to all? Why might this program have higher recruitment, retention, and job placement rates than another? It is up to us to ask these questions, and listen to the stories that are shared, rather than imposing our own interpretations of what is happening.
Lesson Learned:
Stories can take many different turns. When does the story of an educational program shift, and who takes over the telling, or even just the main action? Are new “characters,” such as curricular changes, new administrators, or intervention programs introduced? We need to be mindful of the ways in which a story may evolve or retrogress, expand or contract, or lead into a brand-new tale. Are these turning points documented? What is the ripple effect of these plot twists? Who is/are the new narrators, and how does the tone or mood of the story change? How might these asides lead us into discovering something new?
Rad Resource:
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has a Teaching Storytelling Position Statement on its website, which addresses the many ways in which storytelling impacts students, teachers, and schools as a meaning-making tool. When read through an evaluation lens, this statement reflects much of our work and how we try to learn about—and learn from—each other’s stories in everything that we do.
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