Preparing School Evaluators: Hiroshima Pilot Test of the Japan Evaluation Society’s Accreditation Project

This article reports on the efforts of the Japan Evaluation Society (JES), in collaboration with the Canadian Evaluation Society, to develop and pilot test an accreditation and certification scheme for school evaluators. The purpose of the JES accreditation model is to support evaluation capacity building and promote high quality evaluation by developing functional evaluation competencies. The article describes the theory and practice of the JES approach to evaluation training and accreditation, including its overall rationale, the influence of Japan’s socio-political context, the content of the school evaluator training program, and the findings of the initial “test of concept” pilot test in Hiroshima. Based on a six-month follow-up evaluation, the article also provides an assessment of the acceptance, early results, and potential sustainability of the evaluator training program. These findings have encouraged the JES to establish the accreditation scheme for school evaluation, followed by a similar system for the evaluation of international development assistance programs and government policy evaluation. The development of the JES accreditation scheme should be of interest to other evaluation societies and also to public/nonprofit organizations that must use brief training courses or evaluation “toolkits” for building evaluation competencies quickly among staff.