Measuring the impact of a In 2015, UWCSEA formed a partnership with researchers from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to investigate the impact of the UWC educational experience on students and society. The study was exploratory, intended to build a general understanding of impact and lead to the design of a more in-depth longitudinal study.
questions were concerned with, is only part of the purpose of the UWC mission, which depends on the community transforming these values into action. However, though not sufficient, it is necessary, and can be seen as the first step in the process of developing ethical individuals with a bias for action who can fulfil the UWC mission.
The initial research questions were defined in terms of ethical values, with particular focus on: commitment to care (for self, others and the environment); moral principles, ethical judgement and decision-making; and perceptions, representations and concern for (social) justice. After surveying nearly 1,000 alumni and just under 2,000 students, interviewing more than 50 students and working with UWC-USA, UWC Red Cross Nordic and UWC Waterford Kamhlaba, the researchers have published an exploratory study report. Here are some of the key insights.
The majority of respondents do believe that their values play out in their daily lives (though this finding particularly suffers from the issue of self-reporting).
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Respondents overwhelmingly believe that their experience at UWC had a significant impact on their ethical values and that they incorporate these values into their daily lives. The vast majority (more than 80%) of UWCSEA respondents feel that they are developing—or have developed— important ethical values, both as defined by respondents themselves in their open-ended responses and as defined through the questions on the survey. In addition, approximately 75% of respondents indicated that UWCSEA either ‘quite a bit’ or ‘very much’ helped to develop their ethical values. The development of ethical values, even the specific ones that the research
There is remarkable consistency between students and alumni across all schools in terms of their belief that their ethical values were developed at UWC, which kind of values were developed and their definitions of what constitutes a ‘better world.’ The correlation between the guided questions (where respondents were selecting from a limited list) and the open-ended questions (where respondents, either in survey or in interview, were inputting their own ideas) showed consistency both within and between responses. In other words, UWC students and alumni have similar views on how UWC impacts on them and similar definitions of that impact. Perhaps most tellingly, the open-ended question “what would a better world look like to you?” stimulated consistent responses across all schools, regardless of other factors. While there are some methodological flaws that may have resulted in ‘priming’ of respondents, the level of consistency of response points to a very real, unified point of view, which can be directly related to the UWC mission and values.
