An integrated evaluation framework – smartness, well-being, e-maturity – for participatory evaluation of learning ecosystems: first application to two Italian high schools

In this contribution, after a brief analysis of the critical issues associated with learning ecosystem evaluation frameworks, a participatory evaluation approach is proposed that aims to: (a) be people-centered and bring out the perceptions of all categories involved in educational processes – with particular reference to students, teachers and parents; this is in order to mitigate the objectivity bias associated with self-evaluations conducted by internal evaluation teams by means of top-down evaluation models; b) base the evaluation on an integrable set of multidimensional constructs such as smartness – capable of capturing both the “external” well-being associated with the quality of the context and the well-being perceived at an individual level – and e-maturity, i.e. the digital maturity of the context that defines its positioning (vision, plans and actions) with respect to the potential and opportunities offered by the digital transition; c) provide reference values with the intention of making evaluations of educational ecosystems both synchronically and diachronically comparable, as well as allowing for the elaboration of an adequate base of knowledge to facilitate the elaboration of improvement plans and to support evidence-based decision-making. The contribution includes also the description of a case study in which the participatory evaluation and the integrated evaluation framework were applied to two secondary schools in the city of Rome.