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97 Many problems need to be overcome in developing countries in order to be able to envision a sustainable context for cultural heritage. In many regions and countries key issues of daily life involve basic health care, poverty reduction, education, and civil and political rights. These may be assessed by considering the number of hospitals and clinics, the amount of government assistance for food and clothing, school and university access, and active judicial and civil enforcement. When people are faced with poverty , heritage preservation is not generally seen as an essential component of the social urban or rural development process. When conducting an exploratory ethnographic case study of training centers located in northeastern Brazil between 2010 and 2011, we noticed two principal issues: (1) the difficulty in managing the training centers, which may be attributed to the strong influence of the harsh, povertyrelated context; and (2) the extent to which these contexts impact the performance of training centers as well as the quality of conservation works. This socioeconomic and political background appears to have a strong effect on the provision of sustainable preservation processes, making impracticable initiatives of development promotion and consequently affecting negatively the outcomes of programs. A commonly shared perception of interviewees in the study was that program outcomes did not meet local communities’ and market demands . Identifying reasons for this situation was not an easy task as there is a lack of documentation indicating social, economic, and cultural impacts of the programs on local communities and preservation systems. A review of pertinent literature in the field identified that program evaluators seem to adopt almost exclusively quantitative rather than qualitative evaluation methods for cultural heritage training programs. While quantitative data are undoubtedly useful for measuring the successful execution of goals, context-specific qualitative aspects affecting training Karla Nunes Penna and Elisabeth Taylor 7 Benefits of Using Qualitative Ethnographic Methodology in the Evaluation of PreservationTraining Programs’Performance in Developing Countries: A Case Study of the Northeast Region of Brazil 98 P R E S E R V A T I O N E D U C A T I O N programs have so far been largely ignored in the existing official reports. The aim of this chapter is therefore to discuss the potential of utilizing ethnographic methodology in naturalistic settings to evaluate the performance of conservation training centers, which seems essential for ensuring successful conservation practices and initiatives that promote sustainable development. Furthermore, we investigate the influence of the local contexts on the establishment of indicators for program evaluation. ConservationTraining Programs and the Importance of Evaluations According to the Guidelines for Education and Training for the Conservation of Monuments, Ensembles and Sites (International Council on Monuments and Sites, 1993, par. 1), conservation is a cultural, artistic, technical, and craft activity based on humanistic and scientific studies and systematic research. Conservation practices demand well-trained people with appropriate skills to lead interventions and to deal with decision-making processes that take into account the complexities of the field. Thus, training for conservation is a fundamental part of the preservation system. The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (iccrom) states in the document “Training Strategy in the Conservation of Cultural Sites” that the aim of training is to guarantee that conservation management is applied to heritage resources taking into consideration the qualities and values of each heritage site, as well as their specific condition, the cultural, social, and economic context, and the risks that each site may meet. Training should provide the skills that are required by the professionals, crafts, or administrations involved; training should also facilitate collaboration between different disciplines, and the communication with the general public. While training should be understood in relation to specific needs in each area, the response may be obtained in different forms, at the international, regional, national, or local level. Based on Jukka Jokilehto’s and unesco’s statements it can be concluded that conservation and preservation training programs are vital since these programs are responsible for preparing specialized professionals who will develop and implement preservation initiatives, lead efforts , and teach others how to operate within the heritage processes. There are international recommendations such as the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage’s, in article 5, which suggested that to ensure effective and active measures for the protection, conservation, and presentation of the cultural and...

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