Reflect on Practice: Evaluation
It is critical to take time to stop, be still, and reflect; these moments allow us to harness key learnings that have emerged in our work and then strategize next steps for improvement.
Reflection also reminds us of your purpose, vision, and objectives.
Reflection and action is the foundation of our practice at Girls Action.
~ Tatiana Fraser, Executive Director, Girls Action Foundation
In our experience a really great program is one that is owned by girls at every stage of the process and which is continuously shaped by young women’s input and feedback. This means being committed to remaining adaptable and relevant to the changing realities of girls’ and young women’s lives.
In the popular education spiral, reflecting on practice means considering how effective your actions have been in furthering social change. This is established based on the stories of lived realities that participants share and your collective analysis of what could be changed to improve oppressive or negative situations.
Reflecting on practice should not only happen at the end of an activity, workshop or action; it should happen constantly throughout. In every aspect of the spiral model it is important to incorporate a moment to consider how things went, how they could have been different, and what you would do next time. This demonstrates the popular education principle of praxis, a constant process of action followed by reflection (which is followed by more action, and so on!).
Similarly, evaluating at each stage is important for a program as a whole. Reflection or evaluation should not happen just at the end. It should happen as you go through each stage of a program cycle, which includes establishing a need for a program, planning the program, implementing a program, as well as when you assess the result of a post-program evaluation and when you act on the findings of your evaluation.
