Background

The following text presents an introduction to describe the background of the collected resources.

The development co-operation field

Over the nineties, the tendency in development co-operation moved from the technical approach to increasingly participatory approaches. These are seen to be "systemic" or "process-oriented", from having previously been "goal-oriented" and "result-oriented". It is not that the goals do not matter any more: only that the way leading to them is seen as being even more important, and the goals are no more immovable, but questioned and restated along the way, as the project assists a better understanding of the reality. Results are crucial in validating the process - but have minimal value if the process is seen as one having created imbalance, rather than ensure sustainability.

A first step to enrich the purely-technical approach, performed already in the eighties, was the inclusion of participation in planning - and later, to some extent, also in evaluation. Participation aimed initially to include the local perspectives - especially of the target group - and to increase the chances of sustainability of projects by aiming to create local ownership through joint planning. Participation modelled the principles of political theory and attempted to both bridge the gap between the development agencies and the local partners, and also to harness the local knowledge to sustain development.

Participation was constantly enriched due to feed-back from practitioners, but also due to new developments in social and management science, acknowledging the importance of personal attitude and of trust for the sustainability of projects, and also the acceptance of new forms of evaluation, moving away from the strictly positivist position, towards inclusion of constructivist elements, and firmly towards more qualitative rather than quantitative indicators. Participation thus became more genuine, and evaluation aimed at representing less the control on the implementer, and more the accountability of the implementer. Issues such as "accountability towards the target group", "accountability towards members" were added to the traditional "upwards" accountability towards the donor.

The concept of learning organisation and the advances in action research also changed the focus of evaluation towards its formative role. Self-evaluation and internal monitoring became main steering tools for the management of projects.

The complexity of intertwined issues to be tackled by development projects call for new approaches, where more complex forms of planning and implementation are needed in order to achieve sustainability. The network - and the partnerships - are becoming the organisational forms considered as best-adapted to effective development co-operation.

Learning becomes central to the management of projects: self-evaluation developed from being a steering mechanism for project management, to include the explicit function of informing organisational and individual learning from the project.

Planning methods - usually having as starting point the identification of the problems to be solved - developed alternative approaches, taking a shared vision as a starting point, and mobilising individual action towards turning the vision into reality. The resources of the project now focus more on the local potential, than on the external input. Local knowledge and assets have become important resources for the implementation of projects.

Flexibility becomes a dominant variable for dealing with changes of the project environment that are difficult to manage through planned assumptions: this makes rational planning impossible unless the models of reality used in planning are changed. All these changes in the development approach are aimed towards ensuring the sustainability of projects - and more, sustainability with complex variables, where long-term and a "larger picture" of the environment, even global considerations, are taken into account.

The approach to scaling-up of projects also changed. The policy dimension grew in importance during the nineties: local policies are advocated to allow for the dissemination of innovation of projects, rather than attempting to replicate models. The projects themselves became more comprehensive in their approach, with whole communities as main target group and partner, rather than specific groups.

The focus on communities also led to the emergence of new planning approaches, involving large-scale direct participation, in order to better mobilise the local assets: the so-called large-group interventions. The strong movement of lifelong-learning and the concept of learning organisations brought back into the limelight adult learning.

Some of the methods and frameworks for development co-operation explicitly include tools for participatory learning so that more of the intellectual resources of all involved contribute to solving problems that are accepted to being complex, and thus needing complex - and if possible holistic - approaches. Seen from the holistic perspective, the clear, rational, technical approach seems to suffer from tunnel vision, unless applied in determined, well-delimited and controlled environments.

The collection of resources reflects these changes, and will refer to the different steps in approaches to development co-operation. Participation is embedded in practically all researched methods, and the materials are aimed to assist a subtle understanding of participatory processes, so as to best inform the development of approaches specific to the region (south-eastern Europe) by partners in the I.M.PACT project.

The education sector

In the school systems, the search for quality in education led to the school improvement approach, which involves whole schools and their communities in the development of a harmonious learning environment for the pupils, and in the support of quality for all. School improvement calls for teacher participation in the management of the school, and for community participation in supporting the school, and in ensuring equal access.

Self evaluation becomes an important management approach for schools engaged in school improvement. Evaluation as, for, and of school improvement started to change the approach to the very evaluation of schools in the wider context of the educational system, rather than within their own community. Issues such as the democratic environment of schools, the safety in school, emerged as being as relevant as the results of knowledge-assessment of students. Specific evaluation methodologies such as the empowerment evaluation worked remarkably well in schools.

The school improvement approach matched the decentralisation of education sytems, aiming to support democratic approaches to the management of education, and to assist schools become integrated in their communities, and thus offer a better-adapted educational service. The remaining central functions of curriculum development, quality insurance, and access, attempt to weld functions of support, democratic regulation and internal harmonisation, rather than of control.

The inspiration drawn from democratic practices led to changes in teaching methods, towards pupil-centred approaches. Student participation - where the meaning of participation moved from that of "attendance" to "influencing the decision-making process" - became a challenging dimension tackled by many democratic countries. Lessons from political science further supported the refinement of education policy-making, where policy evaluation is becoming a tool in driving the reform.

Lifelong learning is promoted as a means for both individual empowerment and individual responsibility. Adult education regains importance and lifelong-learning strategies attempt to now develop skills and attitudes for lifelong learning already during school years. The event of globalisation entails complex approaches to reforming education, where the local and global dimensions need to be harmonised, and where education faces the challenging task of developing skills that allow both competitive survival in a globalised world, and provision of locally-needed skills. Evaluation is challenged in attempting to define goals for global education, and to inform national policy-making in an intensively-globalised context.

The focus of learning also moved to encompass groups, organisations and communities, in an attempt to overcome the atomisation entailed by globalisation, through urbanisation, displacement of populations, changes in traditional ways of life. Concepts like learning organisations, participatory learning, have gained more and more terrain and support in the field of adult learning as well as in the implementation of development strategies.

Organisation of the collection

This is in no way a comprehensive collection, and is adapted to the needs of the I.M.PACT project. The collection is focussed on participatory evaluation (and the related components of planning and monitoring). It is also aimed mostly at education projects and programmes. For this reason, it will also contain some background information from the education sector.

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