Towards Civic Engagement - Sharing the Impact of Hearts and Minds in Challenging Times

Over the past two years EQI has been active in engaging with school communities across Northern Ireland helping them develop their capacity to engage in meaningful school evaluation actions. The outcomes of this engagement will be published in the coming weeks by EQI at an event in Parliament Buildings, Belfast. The publication will take the form of a compendium featuring Action Based School Evaluation Research Projects that were facilitated by Dr.Patrick Shevlin and Dr Martin Brown. It comprises School Evaluation Case Studies of all school types (cross-phase primary and post-primary, controlled and maintained across the religious divide) , and including integrated and shared education schools throughout Northern Ireland. The key focus of the research was targeted school improvement in a variety of forms together with the use of innovative techniques for self-evaluation and continuing professional learning.

As evidenced in the report, the significant impact of this research has been achieved through a series of school-based action research sessions, with accompanying and ongoing in-service at these sessions. Towards civic engagement, this has resulted in (challenging times) schools throughout Northern Ireland, taking ownership of Evaluation for improvement by developing and initiating a series of innovative school evaluation measures with data-informed measures of impact in core areas of education such as Leadership, Assessment and Health and Wellbeing in their school communities.

Harnessing the impact of Hearts and Minds, it is envisaged that this will become an annual event that will expand and incorporate additional Northern Ireland schools’ and schools in other jurisdictions such as Scotland throughout the coming years.