The usefulness of educational systems evaluations: the value of the consideration of context

Abstract

This paper reviews procedures of evaluation of educational systems. Based on this review, some factors related with the low usefulness of this type of assessment are discussed. The analysis is directed toward the poor design of context questionnaires. It is observed that context questionnaires fail to explain performance. Low capacity performance explanation is the cause of the low utility of educational systems evaluations; because they do not allow for establishing recommendations for improvement. We propose an alternative theoretical and methodological basis for designing context questionnaires. This type of methodology to design the questionnaires of context for the evaluation of education systems is ultimately intended to secure the theoretical quality of the constructs that are measured, and provide a solid basis for defining an explanatory model that allows for extracting more useful information with which we work on assessments of systems. This proposal suggests the need to take as a reference the contributions of educational research, a systemic model that helps to provide coherence to the evaluation plans, consider the information needs of audiences involved in the evaluation, and a more rigorous instrument design procedure. This methodology is based on other work presented in this issue of the journal and cited in this paper.