Small Answers to the Big Question: Learning from Language Programme Evaluation Written by Richard Kiely

I am given a task in Program Evaluation Course which is to do an article review of the article “Small answers to the big question: Learning from language programme evaluation” written by Richard Kiely from The University of Bristol, UK. Generally, I found that this article is interesting and it gives me a lot of information and understanding about what is a program evaluation and what is the uses of program evaluation as well as the changes it can bring. This article discusses the importance of program evaluation based upon two research on program evaluation that been carried out by Towell and Tomlinson (1999) and Pennington (2004). In my opinion, I personally think that this article would be difficult to understand due to the language used and the way it been written. This would give certain reader hard time trying to identify the purpose, objectives, theoretical framework, methodology, etc in the paper as it is scatter around in each of the subtopic given. Therefore, I will review the article based on some items below:

Abstract

        The abstract written by the researcher is clear and descriptive. There are also some questions which lead reader to have some moment of time to think back what program evaluation is. It had mentioned the purpose of the paper that is to synthesis the conceptions of program evaluation, to facilitate the integration of research and management and the aspects of program development. However, there is not any information about the methodology and sample sizes mention in the abstract. Therefore, I found that the abstract is incomplete as it only gives me brief information on what program evaluation is.

Literature Review and Background

        Basically, the section of literature review is missing in the article. However, this does not represent that there is no literature review. When I read through the article, I found that Sir Richard Kiely had inserted the literature review in every section of his article. Whenever a concept or an argument was presented in this article, the literature review will appear right after the concept or argument presented. This might be helpful for certain reader as the literature review is closely linked with the concept and the reader can gain straightforward understanding about the information they are reading. Nevertheless, I personally think that it would be easier for me to have some basic understanding from the literature review as it own before I read the research paper or concept presented.

        Other than that, this article also introduced some background of the article. Unlike the other research article that I normally read, the background of this article is about the history of language program evaluation. This is different from the background of research article because research article provides background of the study and why a research is conducted.

Theoretical Framework

        Similar to the literature review section, the theoretical framework of this article is included in some section of the articles such as the subtopic, program evaluation and teachers at work in Features of context in language programme evaluation. Again, the writer has inserted the framework related to the study as an example when the concept of who is involve in programme evaluation and how programme evaluation can be conducted. A framework from Zimmerman (1998) is used in this article to clarify the meaning of discourse identity, situated identity and transportable identity. Hence, it can be argued that there is a theoretical framework used in one of the example of research mentioned in the article. Though, the complete description the theoretical framework used is omitted which might lead to misunderstanding in novice reader.

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