Facet 4: Collaborate/share expertise
Collaborate & identify expertise, decide on shared values, outcomes & approaches
For an intervention and evaluation to be rolled out successfully, it is important that everyone involved has an opportunity to contribute to the decision-making process. This way, as decisions are made, the whole team will develop a shared understanding of all aspects we have discussed thus far.
Understanding and agreement on what we should be measuring. Agreement on meaningful criteria. How to report and illustrate the findings in a helpful and accessible way.
For an intervention and evaluation to be rolled out successfully, it is important that everyone involved has an opportunity to contribute to the decision-making process. This way, as decisions are made, the whole team will develop a shared understanding of all aspects we have discussed thus far.
Evaluation Support Scotland’s ‘health check’ template below may help in the process of reflecting honestly on the skills and knowledge of the team in relation to:
- Setting outcomes and indicators
- Collecting evidence
- Acting on learning
- Analysing and reporting
Self-evaluation health check template:
http://www.evaluationsupportscotland.org.uk/resources/414/
Where there are identified deficiencies in skills, experience or knowledge within the team, a strategy needs to be developed to secure help at the appropriate time. It is good to establish those connections at the outset, so that those providing support are advised well in advance and have the opportunity to contribute their thoughts early on.
It is also valuable to discuss approaches to self-evaluation and what tools, techniques and templates the team will use to reflect on and document how things are progressing. Reflective practice can be undertaken in many different ways and the documents below provide some examples.
Reflective practice resources:
http://evaluationsupportscotland.org.uk/resources/444/
Capturing casual moments template:
http://www.evaluationsupportscotland.org.uk/resources/355/
It is important that everyone in the team has an understanding of roles and responsibilities and who to contact for support.
One area that may be worth careful consideration, as there was a lack of consensus in our study, is the language used to both describe and deliver the intervention (terminology and definitions). ‘Harm’ may be more appropriate to use than ‘cruelty’ for example. This issue would benefit from attention in the wider community of AW educators (Muldoon & Willliams, 2021a; 2021b).
