Who will evaluate my school?
Who are the Evaluation and Programme leaders?
This page introduces you to IB visitors: the programme leader and the evaluation leader.
In 2020 the IBEN visiting evaluation team roles were significantly revised.
When you are evaluated you will host two site visitors for each IB programme that you run. One will be the Evaluation Leader and the other the Programme Leader. Each of these roles are specific and site visitors will be trained for one (or both) of the roles. IBEN evaluation team leaders (Evaluation Leader) will have strategic leadership experience; the Programme Leader with have programmatic expertise.
In multiple programme schools, including continuum schools, as well as for synchronized visits, a team chair will also be assigned.
Together with Lisa Nicholson, I wrote the workshops in 2020 to upskill IB site visitors in these roles. This training is being rolled out for 1,000 IBEN visitors over 2020-2021 to ensure that the IB have enough site visitors to lead the five-year evaluation process.
In their training all IBEN visitors using the 2020 Guide to programme evaluation have been encouraged to adopt the disposition of being an appreciative inquiry leader, supporting the school to develop its IB programmes.
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is defined by Cooperrider & Whitney (2005) as “the co-evolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the world around them. It involves systematic discovery of what gives a system ‘life. AI involves the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to heighten positive potential”.
The role of an appreciative leader is to be a catalyst of change and to look for and nurture the best in others (Whitney, Trosten-Bloom, & Rader, 2010; Cooperrider & Whitney, 2005).
AI taps into what is termed the positive change core of the organization. AI “assumes that every living system has many untapped and rich and inspiring accounts of the positive”. The positive change core of the organization is seen to be a vast and untapped resource in organizations. Appreciative Inquiry is based on five main principles:
- Constructivist Principle: organizations are living, human constructions. To be a leader, according to this principle, is to know and understand an organization as a human construction, as ever changing, and is ‘how’ one knows an organization.
- Principle of Simultaneity: sees inquiry as intervention. What results from our questions becomes that which shapes our future. Leaders, then, guide which questions are asked, what changes are made, and encourages movement toward a new future.
- Poetic Principle: reflects the metaphor that an organization is much like an emerging book. However, this story is constantly being co-authored and re-interpreted. The Appreciative Leader makes the story, and its unfolding, explicit. Each participating author of the story in acknowledged and validated for contributing, wherever the story may go.
- Anticipatory Principle: is based on the observation that human beings are forever looking to and anticipating the future. Inquiry, the kinds of questions we ask, helps to shape that anticipatory reality.
- Positive Principle: Appreciative Inquiry is ultimately relational. Positive affect, caring, shared meaning, and purpose fuel change efforts.
Mapping the process
This graphic maps the evaluation process from the point of view of both the Programme leader (PL) and the Evaluation leader (EL)
Role #1: Evaluation Leader
Key skills:
Strategic leadership | change management | resource management | pedagogical leadership | interpersonal facilitation and communication
Mapping the role
I am very grateful to Coralie MacIntye,a Junior School Principal working at an IB Continuum School, Vancouver, BC, Canada, for this PowerPoint - which can use in your school.
Requirements for the role
Evaluation leaders will (a) have at least five years experience as a school leader (Head of School, Principal, Director); (b) demonstrate strategic leadership and understanding of change management processes, and (cO high levels of language proficiency in one of the three languages of IB delivery.
Links on this website to themes in this role:
- Schools as learning organisations: Schools as 'Learning Organisations' | Schools - System Thinking
- Understands cultural and economic context: School Culture | Culture change
- Understands change management processes: Change Management | Lead the change | Managing change across different cultures | Change Management Tools
- Delivery of strategy: Strategic Leadership | Strategic Planning Process | Strategic Tools
Role #2: Programme Leader
Key skills:
IB programme expertise | change management in implementation of IB programme(s) | deep understanding of role of IB coordinator | communication and interpersonal skills
Role description:
The Programme Leader will have IB programme expertise. They complete the preliminary review of school documentation at least four months prior to the evaluation visit. They will understand the implication of a school's culture and context.
I am very grateful to experienced DP Coordinator, Arpeetaa Tyagi ( currently at American Embassy School in New Delhi) for her willingness to share this description of the role of the Programme Leader.
I am very grateful to Iyad Matuk for his willingness to share this description of the role of the Programme Leader.