In order to teach science well, science teachers need to know what to focus on in order to ensure their assessment of student learning is meaningful and useful for the students' on going learning and development. The diversity and range of content and skills within the subject of science mean that the assessment capabilities required by…

Promotion of evaluation as a profession in Australia and New Zealand is discussed. The profession is challenged to make a commitment to utility, quality products and processes, and the development of skilled, trained professionals. Ways of overcoming barriers to the establishment of evaluation as a profession are outlined. (TJH)

In Design and Technology lessons English primary school pupils between the ages of 5 and 11 learn to design and make artefacts with materials and tools. Teachers, mainly non-specialists, are expected to teach specific skills, knowledge and understanding in contexts which are deemed to be meaningful to the pupils. In 1996 a set of primary school…

Reviews approaches to quality management in the private sector from an evolutionary perspective. Focuses on two critical dimensions: product versus system, and objective versus intersubjective orientation. Experiences within the private sector can be relevant for the public sector, and the complexity of evaluation has implications for the…

Evaluation management requires a system for measuring, improving, and accounting for quality. The Institute for Program Evaluation in the United States General Accounting Office is developing such a system. (Author)

Use-oriented approaches to evaluation have been challenged by contentions that the responsiveness of such evaluations undermines their technical quality. This discussion analyzes purported conflicts between these evaluation criteria of utility and accuracy by examining underlying assumptions related to evaluation's purpose and politics. (TJH)

Five papers and an introduction discuss internal evaluation (IE), concentrating on the various sources of authority for IE and ways of enhancing IE authority. The roles of internal evaluators, conflicts in the evaluation process, and evaluation in a state education agency are reviewed. (SLD)

A problem that exists in business and industrial training in particular, and in adult education in general, is that program evaluation is treated as an add-on activity, usually performed only at the request of someone outside the training organization. The relevant knowledge in two separate fields, quality improvement and innovation diffusion, can…

Identifies important criteria for assessing the quality of educational research and applies these 20 identified criteria to 2 recent international comparative studies in education, the Second International Science Study and the first International Assessment of Educational Progress. The major types of criteria are utility, propriety, and accuracy.…

As part of the military recruiting effort, the Department of Defense sponsors surveys of the national youth population to help design recruiting and advertising strategies. This report develops and applies a method of using the information contained in national youth surveys to estimate the probability that respondents taking the Armed Forces…