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Building on the Best: Using Appreciative Inquiry to Evaluate Worker-Trainer Led Health and Safety Training Programs
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| Presenter(s):
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| Katherine King,
University of Michigan,
krking@umich.edu
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| Judith Daltuva,
University of Michigan,
jdal@umich.edu
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| Thomas Robins,
University of Michigan,
trobins@umich.edu
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| Abstract:
Since 1990 the United Automobile Workers (UAW) union has received federal funding to provide industrial emergency response training to its members. The program relies heavily on a cadre of worker (peer) trainers. Since its inception, the program has benefited from a third party evaluation process. In the early formative years, evaluation was critical to documenting the effectiveness of the worker-led programs and to providing feedback leading to improvements. Now that the program is firmly established, evaluation has taken on the additional role of building on the best for continual improvement. When compared to more traditional evaluation approaches, recent use of Appreciative Inquiry based evaluation strategies (positively worded inquiry processes that identify and build on successes) has resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of constructive comments on how to improve the programs. Further, the participants themselves enjoy the process, resulting in more lively and empowering responses.
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Evaluators Train Stakeholders to Understand Data Collection Strategies and to Use Data Base Management Systems: What are the Lessons to be Learned?
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| Presenter(s):
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| Janice Fournillier,
Georgia State University,
jfournillier@gsu.edu
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| Sheryl Gowen,
Georgia State University,
sgowen@gsu.edu
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| Abstract:
Evaluation no longer takes for granted the various roles of the participants from whom data are collected, the stakeholders who are increasingly being asked to play a role in the data collection process, and the evaluators themselves. Evaluation now adopts and adapts more participatory, collaborative, and dialogic approaches. Little however is known about what is learned in situations where the evaluators find themselves assuming the additional role of trainers of the stakeholders. The assumption often is that once training takes place the participants will better be able to deliver the goods. In this paper we focus on: the kinds of learning that take place or do not take place within and without the training processes; the impact that the uses of the materials and the training sessions have on the quality of the data collected; and the kinds of understandings the participants gain about the methodological processes involved in the evaluation.
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