Assessing the Quality of Heritage Education Programs: Construction and Calibration of the Q-Edutage Scale

Abstract

Improving the assessment of the quality of educational programs is one of the main objectives of research in heritage education. However, we do not have an instrument that is brief, objective and allows the use of a common standard for unbiased quality comparison between different programs. The objective of this study has been to design and develop a tool for the quality assessment of heritage education programs, which maintains an appropriate balance between accuracy and brevity, and can be used both on its own (e.g., for screening purposes when the number of programs to be evaluated is high) and to support broader assessment systems. Relevant quality indicators were identified, according to previous research and evaluations by 17 experts, resulting in 14 quality indicators that were calibrated using Item Response Theory models from the assessment of 330 heritage education programs. The scale was able to discriminate with high precision between various levels of quality (i.e., very low, low, medium, high and very high), provided a good level of information over a wide area of the variable, and produced unbiased scores among different evaluators. The Q-Edutage scale is an relevant addition that contributes to improving the rigor of evaluation and program planning in the field of heritage education.