Educators frequently claim that the projects in which they are involved are democratic. However, considering the multiple and often conflicting notions of democracy and democratic education, are there any shared understandings of what either of those notions means? Does the claim that a project is democratic carry with it any shared assumptions,…

In this article, the author discusses what rubric really is. A rubric is not a technical specification nor is it a checklist for ailing student performances in need of therapy. It is the finest description of what teachers think is important for their students right now, in the service of their learning. Most important, it is a statement of their…

Successfully providing guidance to others is no easy task. Such is the challenge faced by committees charged with developing guidelines for ethical professional practice. The process of establishing and revising the Program Evaluation Standards (Joint Committee, 1994), for example, is a multiyear task that must seems endless to participants: a…

This article demonstrates that while the more obvious and visible forms of citizenship education (such as introducing it as a new subject on the timetable and a public examination option) are being endorsed and promoted in official discourse, less visible forms (such as attending to ethics and values across the curriculum or the impact of…

Lyle F. Bachman is Professor, Department of Applied Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles. He is a past president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and of the International Language Testing Association. He has published numerous articles and books in the areas of language testing, program evaluation, and second…

This commentary focuses on the promises and challenges facing the Social and Character Development (SACD) consortium in evaluating the effectiveness of seven universal SACD programs designed to enhance student behavior and school climate under conditions of real world practice. In this commentary, we highlight that the opportunity costs associated…

Exploring the questions (1) What are values?, (2) How can values help the individual relate to his world? and (3) What is evaluation?, the author suggests ways an evaluator's values can constructively affect program evaluation. (Author/SK)

Political groups, social movements, and organizational influences are sources of values which influence an evaluation study. Value positions can help define and delineate an evaluation problem but, if the values influencing the results are not explicit, the evaluative research may be viewed as something other than it actually is. (BW)

Criticizes character education programs that tend merely to present moral values to students, believing this produces socially responsible behavior. Argues listing values is simplistic and ineffective. Recognizes the situational complexity that confounds making moral choices. Suggests character education must contend with value conflicts and guide…

Extension programs are traditionally human, personal, and responsive in character. The challenge is to design, implement, and evaluate programs that maintain their humanistic qualities while meeting increased accountability demands. (SK)

Working with postmodern ideas, this book questions the search to define and measure quality in the early childhood field and its tendency to reduce philosophical issues of value to purely technical and managerial issues of expert knowledge and measurement. The book argues that there are ways other than the "discourse of quality" for…

Parsons describes benefits and limitations of using financial analysis tools to evaluate human resource development programs, suggesting the additional dimension of values. Brinkerhoff's reaction emphasizes the flaws of impact evaluation, suggesting ways to reframe training evaluation. (SK)

Makes the case that responsiveness is a virtue, in evaluation as in everyday life, rather than merely a methodological tool for use in evaluation. Extends this concept using ideas from the Aristotelian tradition of practical philosophy as elaborated in recent works on hermeneutic philosophy. (SLD)

Taking the position that science is not value-free has certain consequences. There are both risks and rewards inherent when evaluators relinquish an objective, non-involved role for a more subjective, partisan role in an evaluation where issues of class, gender, and race are intertwined. It is important for evaluators to consider how their…

Evaluation models have been taken as methodologies for actually conducting evaluations, instead of as persuasions or frameworks within which more specific constructs and methods must be placed. Although evaluation models do not provide methodologies, they do provide a guide for thinking about how an evaluation could be conducted. (Author/LC)