#563

Date:    Wed, 6 Aug 2008 11:48:08 -0700

From:    Mark Fulop <markfulop@YAHOO.COM>

Subject: Empowerment Education evaluations

Hi all,

In our County "popular education" is pretty much being adopted as the defacto standard for education and outreach.  While I am a big believe in  Freire's pedagogy and have worked on programs integrating this approach, I do not consider myself an expert on a designing program evaluation that utilizes a Pop ed approach.  Can anyone with more working expertise point me to sample evalaution tools or methods for evaluating popular education?

note:  I am not looking for info on the link between pop ed and participatory evaluation but more basic and tactical that that.  We are doing a series of pop ed -based workshops and how do we approach evaluating it.
 

m

===

Mark Fulop, MA, MPH

Portland, OR

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#563

Date:    Wed, 6 Aug 2008 14:10:28 -0500

From:    James Teufel <teufel@SIU.EDU>

Subject: Re: Empowerment Education evaluations

My response is based on the assumption the “pop education” is similar to empowerment education.  The gold standard for planning and evaluation in this area comes from the collective works of David Fetterman and Abraham (Abe) Wandersman as well as their students.  While in South Carolina, I was familiar with Abe’s work and knew several of his students.  Fetterman and Wandersman literally wrote the book on empowerment evaluation.  Frances Butterfoss is also an expert in the area (another graduate from South Carolina), especially with regard to group processes.  Their work has focused on communities.  However, if one assumes that school is a context of the community or a community in and of itself, mapping their technique on to empowerment education is feasible and useful.

With regard to only evaluating workshops, measuring changes in empowerment may be difficult for at least four reasons: 1) empowerment is heavily context dependent; 2) shifts in empowerment take moderate to large amounts of effort and time; 3) workshops are artificial environments, which may prevent generalization of skills to natural settings; 4) measuring empowerment as a process is dependent on the outcomes of the proposed process, therefore empowerment must be exhibit both in process and outcomes.

James

Director of Research and Evaluation

Center for Rural Health and Social Service Development

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#564

Date:    Wed, 6 Aug 2008 15:12:39 -0400

From:    Jessica Brueggeman <jessica.brueggeman@MICROMASS.COM>

Subject: Question about Mexico equivalent of the American Medical Association

Hello – a colleague of mine has been doing some research to try to find out if there is an equivalent organization to the American Medical Association, in Mexico.  We’ve been unsuccessful at finding anything relevant.  Does anyone have any related insights to share?

Thanks in advance…

Jessica

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#565

Date:    Wed, 6 Aug 2008 20:23:10 +0000

From:    "Lawrence W. Green" <lwgreen@COMCAST.NET>

Subject: Re: Empowerment Education evaluations

A set of guidelines, criteria, and rating scales for judging the degree of participation or "empowerment" in a community's engagement in a needs assessment or evaluation of community or institutional or policy change can be found in Appendix A of Minkler and Wallerstein's book on Community Based Participatory Research in Health (Sage), and online at www.lgreen.net. --Larry

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#566

Date:    Wed, 6 Aug 2008 15:44:46 -0500

From:    James Teufel <teufel@SIU.EDU>

Subject: Re: Question about Mexico equivalent of the American Medical Association

The article found via the embedded link below gives a great summary of professionalization of medicine in Mexico.

http://jhppl.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/22/1/73.pdf

I believe the National Academy of Medicine of Mexico is still the most prestigious organization in Mexico; but I have been out of the loop for a few years so I could be wrong.

If anyone would know about the current state of affairs, it would the nonprofit named the Medical Society of the United States and Mexico.

James

Director of Research and Evaluation

Center for Rural Health and Social Service Development

Southern Illinois University Carbondale