Nursery experience is now common for young children and their families. Questions of quality have focussed mainly on safety and early learning. The roles of subtle emotional processes in daily pedagogic interactions have received surprisingly little attention. This paper discusses the Tavistock Observation Method (TOM), a naturalistic method of…

In northern Nigeria, over 80% of the unskilled and uneducated adolescent street boys, or "Almajiris", are from the ethnic Hausa-Fulani tribes. They depend on street begging and menial jobs for daily survival. In dealing with the situation, state vocational centers were established as the Millennium Hope Project (MHP) to provide the boys…

This article presents the results of research conducted at the first place where autism was diagnosed in China, the Nanjing Child Mental Health Research Center. The purpose was to examine the development of service provision for children with autism in this state-run medical institution. Specifically, the specific intervention model for autism,…

The paper describes a naturalistic evaluation study of an enrichment program for gifted learners in Newfoundland. The pull-out program (for two half days out of six) is described in terms of audience concerns and issues, standards, program components, and data-generating techniques (observations and interviews). The evaluation led to a report…

The evaluation of a science education project for teachers in Durban (South Africa) illustrates some problems inherent in the application of the fourth-generation evaluation approach of Guba and Lincoln. One of the strongest concerns is that full participation by stakeholders may be an unrealistic assumption. (SLD)

A one-year project was conducted by the Training, Enterprise, and Education Directorate to evaluate the effectiveness of a learning program at a northwest England Skillcenter for developing nonmanual skills in unemployed adults. Interviews with 30 trainees and training workplace observations identify strengths and weaknesses of this continually…

A naturalistic approach to evaluation is illustrated through the description of the evaluation of a small-scale agricultural project in a village in Mali, West Africa. The evaluation considered program impact as well as the quality of the conclusions drawn using the illuminative model of evaluation. (SLD)

Included in this document are two reports of studies using data from the same l5 research sites in Alberta, Canada. The first study, "Critical Variables in ECS-Grade One Articulation," documented factors associated with successful articulation of Early Childhood Services (ECS) and primary school programs. Data were collected through…

A framework is proposed for evaluating the learning ecology and processes created by information technology in schools and developing an ecological model for research. The evaluation of Project Comptown, an intervention with extensive use of computers in two Israeli communities (with over 6,000 students), illustrates the framework. (SLD)

This book presents a comprehensive treatment of the subject of evaluation as applied to literacy programs, covering evaluation theory, planning, and practice. Part I discusses questions of definition, context, objectives, and functions of evaluation and presents descriptions and analyses of evaluation paradigms and models. In Part II, the…