Conceptualizing’ a multifaceted approach to evaluate improvement in educational outcomes

Education is the infrastructure of future state competitiveness and cohesiveness. Educational Evaluation Programs (EEPs) have an ongoing effect on educational outcomes. Thus, EEPs are affecting the future state competitive ability and social cohesiveness. This paper develops a conceptual framework for the evaluation of educational improvement. We propose that educational outcomes are multifaceted, and suggest an innovative nonlinear multifaceted approach (NOMA) for evaluating improvement in educational outcomes. The developed method is based on adjusting Chernoff faces (Chernoff, 1973) to the educational arena. The multivariate facets represent the educational outcomes and are displayed in the shape of human faces. The individual parts (e.g., eyes, ears, and mouth) represent the values of the variables by their shape, size, placement and orientation. To this end, a preliminary survey of 50 educators was conducted. The results of the survey indicate the outcomes that are considered as the most important. The following step was to ask 200 teachers and experts to rank these outcomes by their level of importance. The outcomes that received high marks were included in the proposed model. This paper states that the current EEPs are focused on one facet (e.g., students’ achievement) and use linear evaluation methods (e.g., Value Added) to measure improvement, are less likely to be effective compared with the proposed model. Furthermore, it is argued that the suggested conceptual model might contribute to advance state competitiveness and cohesiveness.