External Evaluators

This page provides an overview of the roles of the external evaluators for S-TEAM. We are very pleased to have Professor Rick Duschl and Dr Michela Mayer as our evaluators. Given their specific areas of expertise, we expect that their roles will complement each other to some extent. The evaluation reports, however, will be jointly produced.

The evaluators will have full access to all project documents, although given the overall S-TEAM philosophy of open access, we do not expect to create a large number of confidential documents or reports. Primarily, this will be achieved via the project wiki, but the project manager and other management support team members will be responsible for forwarding specific documents, either 'for information' or at the request of the evaluators.

The project will run for three years and we foresee several distinct phases, each with diffferent requirements for evaluation.  (It may be useful to refer to the milestones page.) These will divide out as follows:

1. M1-M6 (May - October 2009) - project preparatory phase. In this phase, the evaluators should familiarise themselves with the existing project documentation, the consortium partners and planned activities.  They should also gain a sense of where the project stands in relation to other initiatives in science education, and to EU policy in this area.
2. We do not expect a formal report during this period, but it would be good to meet if schedules permit, perhaps at the ESERA conference in Istanbul where we plan to have a management board meeting.
3. M7-M12 (Nov 2009 - Apr 2010). In this phase we will complete our programme of national workshops designed to gather knowledge on the state-of-the-art in inquiry-based science education, across the consortium countries. The preliminary report from Work package 2 (due M9) will sum up this knowledge and we would welcome a brief response to the report, since it will help to determine many of our subsequent strategies. There will also be a number of individual products from WPs and we would like an opinion as to whether these conform to our own internal criteria (see deliverability page).
4. M13-M15 (May 2010- July 2010). This will be a period of consolidation after the publication of  our first (non-mandatory) annual report, and any reaction from the Directorate General Research to our M9/M12 deliverables. We foresee a meeting with the evaluators during our project meeting planned for early June 2010 in Cyprus. At this stage our financial and reporting mechanisms will have been operational for two x six month periods. During this period, therefore, the evaluators should prepare an interim report designed to give an overview of progress against internal objectives, and a view on the activities of the project in the wider European context. This should involve consultation with members of the reference group and other external professionals. This report will enable to project management and WP leaders to address any shortcomings prior to the technical review which is to be conducted at M18, following the mandatory mid-project report and the international conference to be held at around the same time (possibly in conjunction with the launch of the proposed European Central Information Provider). We do not expect the evaluators to deal with financial issues, since there will be formal provision for audit or other financial control procedures.
5. M16-M18 (August 2010 - October 2010) preparation for M18 deliverables, mid-project report and technical review. The evaluators may be consulted during this period in order that any recommendations from their interim report are fully implemented.
6. M19-M24 (November 2010 - April 2011). As in earlier phases, a large group of products is due to be delivered in M24 and the evaluators should again consider their quality and effectiveness against internal criteria. Also, at this stage, the programme of indicator development and internal evaluation instruments within WP9 should be producing numerical evidence of project impact, and the evaluators should critically review these results.
7. M25-M33 (May 2011 - January 2012). We have scheduled the main external evaluation report for M33, and at this stage the majority of deliverables and milestones should have been completed.  This report will therefore prepare the ground for the mandatory end-of-project report and will highlight any issues to be addressed prior to completion. In preparation for this report we would suggest a meeting of the evaluators and management board in June 2011 (M26) with a possible follow up meeting in Dec 2011 (M32) if necessary.