Hello, fellow aea365 readers! My name is Leigh M. Tolley, and I am the Chair of the PreK-12 Educational Evaluation Topical Interest Group (TIG). Our TIG welcomes you to our series of posts for Teacher Appreciation Week!
As a former high school teacher and current Visiting Assistant Professor, Secondary Education at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, I am always interested in learning more about educational evaluation and how it can benefit students, teachers, communities, school and university faculty and staff that work with pre- and in-service teachers, and the myriad other stakeholders and groups that are impacted by our work. To kick off this week, I would like to share some information about our TIG to help us all learn about and collaborate with each other.
Last year, our TIG distributed a survey to our members to try to learn more about us, our interests, and ways in which we would like to be more involved in the TIG and AEA. Although we had a small number of respondents in proportion to our entire TIG membership, this is what we know about ourselves so far:
Lesson Learned: Our TIG members are seasoned evaluators!
Of the 21 respondents to our survey, the majority have been practicing evaluators for over a decade.
Lesson Learned: Our members come from a range of organizations!
Here is a breakdown of the contexts in which the respondents worked:
Lesson Learned: Benefits of TIG involvement!
The top reasons why respondents joined and stay involved with our TIG were networking, staying current on the latest evaluation methods and findings, sharing best practices, and advancing the field of evaluation.
Rad Resources:
We’d love to hear more from the many other members of our TIG, and AEA members in general! In what context do you practice, what are your interests, and how would you like to become more involved? Explore our social media links below, and contact our TIG’s Leadership Team at PreK12.Ed.Eval.TIG@gmail.com!
- TIG Website: http://comm.eval.org/prk12/home
- Facebook: We have migrated conversations from our old community page to our GROUP page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/907201272663363/ . Please come “join” our group, as we use Facebook as a supplement to our website and as a place where we can communicate with each other, share ideas and resources, and just get to know friends, colleagues, and newcomers alike who have similar interests. Anyone who visits the page is welcome to post and share other links and resources with the group.
- LinkedIn: Search for us on LinkedIn as PreK-12 Educational Evaluation TIG. This is a “members only” group, so please send a request to join in order to see the content.
- Twitter: We are “tweeting” with the user name PreK-12 Ed. Eval. Follow @PK12EvalTIG at https://twitter.com/PK12EvalTIG.
The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Ed Eval TIG Week with our colleagues in the PreK-12 Educational Evaluation Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our Ed Eval TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.