Evaluation as Co-learning

Abstract

We all know that learning to do anything — memorizing a poem, driving a car, skating, cooking, leading a meeting — takes time, takes repetition, takes dedication. The results are easy to measure — the goals are narrowly focussed and easily separable from the rest of your activities. But when the sort of learning being assessed has been designed to increase the capacity of government to deal with all sorts of complex problems, how do you measure improvement? This is a complex behavioural change, involving not one single learner but many, often in many different departments. What does success looks like?