Self-Evaluation: Transnational methods and models for Self-Evaluation of non-formal personal competencies
The Greek Self-Evaluation Module
Self-evaluation does not exist so far in Greece as an organised social or labour market related
activity. That is why we regard the ‘Self-evaluation project’ as an opportunity to commence a
public debate on this issue. This could lead to the provision of financial support and to the
provision of Continuing Vocational Training courses. Self-evaluation possibly can become a
very important activity for the somewhat unstructured Greek labour market.
Principles of the Greek Self-evaluation proposal
- Self-evaluation is designed to support, reinforce and enhance the attainment of desired
labour market goals as well as for aspirations for the overall personal biography.
- The process involves participants in learning self-evaluation logic and skills, for example
goal setting, establishing priorities, focusing on questions, interpreting data and data-based
decisions. The participants draw and apply conclusions while focusing the evaluation on
processes and outcomes they consider important and to which they are committed.
- Participants work together as a group and the facilitator supports group cohesion and
collective inquiry.
- Internal self-accountability is highly valued. Therefore self-evaluation supports
participants’ accountability to themselves and their community.
- The evaluator is a facilitator, collaborator and learning resource: participants are decision
makers and self-evaluators.
- The facilitator recognises and values participants’ perspectives and expertise and helps
participants to recognise and value their own and each other’s expertise. Status differences
between the facilitator and participants are to be minimized.
Target Group: Adults who seek to change their employment status (unemployed people,
employed people who aim at getting a job in an area they prefer, employed people who try to
enhance their performance in order to improve job security or gain promotion).
The Greek model for self-evaluation includes four steps:
The first step: Participants are encouraged to fill in a questionnaire and to rate different
personal competences. The four clusters of criteria are constructed from the ‘starfish’ model:
Self-Evaluation: Transnational methods and models for Self-Evaluation of non-formal personal competencies
social and personal competences (related to attitudes and values), methodological and
learning competences.
Examples rating from 1 (“not at all”) to 7 (“very much”):
- I am organised and careful in my work
- I can express opinions that are not popular and fight for rights
- I am flexible in the way I face the facts
- I admit my mistakes
- I am ready to take advantage of opportunities
- I know what I feel and why I feel it
- I comprehend different perceptions and I am sensitive to group differences
- I am willing to share information with others
- I locate and nourish occasions for collaboration
- I guide others by setting an example
- I recognize the need for change and remove obstacles
- I seek new ideas from many sources
Following this, the fifth cluster of content-related and practical competences is addressed.
There are also questions which view similar items from a societal perspective and encourage
participants to examine restrictions experienced as caused by societal structures and policies
and not only or mainly by their own failures:
Examples (rating from 1(“completely disagree”) to 7 (“completely agree”)):
- The social benefits provided by the state for citizens should be proportional to the needs of
each person.
- If a company is about to fire a number of employees, the decision should be taken on the
basis of each employee’s particular needs (family obligations, economic condition, age, health
problems etc.).
- Unemployment benefits lead unemployed people to make less effort in seeking a job, and
those who are working are burdened by paying taxes and ensuring the survival of others.
The second step: Participants are encouraged to examine the job they are looking for. For
this task they are asked to carry through a “Job Analysis”, using their knowledge or their
expectations about this area of work.
This job analysis is carried out by the participants themselves and is based on the assumption
that the participants have the opportunity to write down their perceived (future) duties and
tasks, and order them in terms of Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Other attributes (KSAO).
Then they can give themselves ratings (“weak”, medium”, “strong”) in order to evaluate
themselves against the dimensions that could be important for the envisaged job. At first they
work independently, later on discussing their results in groups. Knowledge is what a person
Self-Evaluation: Transnational methods and models for Self-Evaluation of non-formal personal competencies
needs to know to
do a particular job.
Skill is what a person is able to do in a more practical and concrete way in a job. Ability is a
person’s attitude or capability to undertake the job tasks or to learn to do the job tasks. Other
personal characteristics include anything relevant to the job that is not covered by the other
three. While the first three characteristics (knowledge, skill and ability) focus mainly on job
performance itself, the ‘other’ characteristics relate to job adjustment and satisfaction, as well
as performance.
Using ‘Job Analysis’, a person can realize his/her strengths, weaknesses and training needs.
The differences between the self-evaluation of an individual person and the ‘external’
evaluation by the other group members will become obvious through honest statements.
Discussing these issues can greatly enhance the self-reflection of all participants.
The third step is designed to strengthen the self-reflection of the participants by confronting
the ‘self-image’ of a person with the ‘external image’ of this person constructed by others.
The group should be split into two sub-groups. One group is involved in a discussion or roleplay where the members pretend to be supervisors in the envisaged area of future activities
(general fields of interest e.g. craft workshop, company administration, sales, kindergarten,
etc,). For the role play, the ‘supervisors’ are allocated tasks – for instance, distributing
bonuses, or mediating a conflict between a ‘rude’ employee and an angry customer. In the
role play, they should discuss their decisions and particularly the reasons for them.
The members of the other sub-group act as observers. They can choose the focus for their
observation, for example planning and organising, leadership, teamwork, problem solving,
creativity, systematic reasoning and presentation.
For reasons of simplicity only two themes should be chosen and notes should be taken
individually. After the role play the whole group begins a discussion about the differences of
perception between the individual players and supervisors and amongst them.
This triggers a discussion about reasons for distortions in self-image and also the external
image, like the “halo effect” (a particular feature of the person influences the overall
perception), “self-serving” (one tends to rate oneself higher than others), bias and group
favouritism (people belonging to ones own group get better ratings), “group error” (the
behaviour of the group as a whole influences the perception of individual members), the
“contrast effect “ (the creativity of a person is underestimated – even by themselves – because
there is another person who is even more creative). Most of these effects also occur in the
course of individual self-evaluation through imagining other persons performing the same
task.
Self-Evaluation: Transnational methods and models for Self-Evaluation of non-formal personal competencies
The fourth step: the participants fill in the same questionnaire as during the first step. In our
field research, the participants found it very interesting to compare their own ratings before
and after the ‘intervention’ of steps two and three. They stressed that the whole exercise had
changed their judgement of their own personality and had made them more confident.
The whole self-evaluation module gave them more security in realistically and positively
planning their future and occupational career, as well as in dealing with restrictions imposed
by social and economic conditions.
Participants were encouraged to draw up an action plan for attaining their goals and to specify
steps for self-improvement. They were encouraged to look at opportunities for Continuing
Vocational Training and also for opportunities to contribute to community initiatives. These
issues were talked over in the group discussion.
SWOT analysis
Strength: Activities encourage participants to explore different opportunities for future
actions and resources in their communities. Activities are focused on the individual needs of
the participants and encourage self-reflection, self-confidence and particularly the
development of social and personal competences. In addition, they encourage participants to
identify skills, knowledge and abilities they have acquired outside formal education and
training and to consider the different contexts in which they can gain new competences.
Weakness: Because self-evaluation is not implemented so far in Greece, the usefulness of
this particular module could not be tested on a large scale or with different sub-groups of the
overall target group
Opportunities:
The explorative testing has shown that self-evaluation could be very successful, especially in
the circumstances of the Greek labour market.
Threats: Throughout Europe, external evaluation is being promoted as a market mechanism
in non-economic fields like education. In Greece it could turn out that self-evaluation is not
undertaken on the initiative of the individual but rather as a disguised form of self-inflicted
control, driven by external authorities.
Contact:
University of Patras
Nikitas Patiniotis
26500 Patras, Hellas
[email protected]
Self-Evaluation: Transnational methods and models for Self-Evaluation of non-formal personal competencies
Links to the Tools
Title
Self evaluation questionnaire
Self evaluation questionnaire
Benchmarks
SWOT Analysis
Language
English
Greek
English
English
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