Program evaluations that lack experimental design often fail to produce evidence of impact because there is no available control group. Theory-based evaluations can generate evidence of a program's causal effects if evaluators collect evidence along the theorized causal chain and identify possible competing causes. However, few methods are…

Evaluating teachers' professional development initiatives (PDI) is one of the main challenges for the teacher professionalisation field. Although different studies have focused on the effectiveness of PDI, the obtained effects and evaluative methods have been found to be widely divergent. By means of a narrative review, this study provides an…

This article draws on findings from a national review of the evaluation of access and equity initiatives across Australian higher education to argue that utilising responsive mixed methods focused on the values of participants enables crucial understanding of what matters to the people involved. Based on the evidence collected, a "what…

Measurable targets, key performance indicators, value for money--whatever we may think of the "impact agenda," it looks like it is here to stay. Are we trapped in a positivist, new managerialist spiral of demonstrating the value of our work, or can we take the lead in reframing the discourse on how educational development proves its…

Institutional assessment initiatives can provide opportunities to make the intellectual work of teaching and learning in composition studies more visible. Reciprocally, the scholarship of teaching and learning's situatedness within disciplinary norms and values can enhance institutional assessments, providing a check on the tendency to rely…

This article examines the importance of context in evaluative inquiry. Following guidelines from real-world and utilization-focused evaluation frameworks, four projects are described to illustrate one foundation's pragmatic approach to evaluation that values collaboration, methodological appropriateness, and utilization. The authors contend that…

This report summarizes the complex research literature on quantitative methods for assessing how impacts of educational interventions on instructional practices and student learning differ across students, educators, and schools. It also provides technical guidance about the use and interpretation of these methods. The research topics addressed…

Planning, implementing, and assessing a service-learning project can be a complex task because service-learning projects often involve multiple constituencies and aim to meet both the needs of service providers and community partners. In this article, Stufflebeam's Context, Input, Process, and Product (CIPP) evaluation model is recommended as a…

This study investigated the effects of item position on the stability of item parameters for items used on a large-scale, national certification examination and the resulting impact on examinee performance. Participants in this study included individuals from a large, chain restaurant who completed a nationally accredited food safety examination.…

Despite major efforts to change teachers' practice through professional development activities, much remains as it always was. Our claim is that this rarely happens because significant change in how one teaches can only come about as a result of some realization about oneself as a teacher, and the resulting changes in identity. In recent years we…

The current study will examine possible contextual effects relative to differences in reading comprehension performance in the state of Florida. While the Reading First (RF) Impact study examined such difference using a regression discontinuity design, the authors are primarily interested in other analytic methods that might answer different…

This chapter presents the findings from a review of the practice of evaluation in federal agencies as an attempt to inform policies on method choice. The author explores whether federal agencies differ in their approaches to evaluation design and the factors that influence these differences. The nature of the programs, agency culture, evaluator…

This study was commissioned to investigate whether or not, and if so, how, use of different assessment methods makes a difference to learner achievement and progress in the learning and skills sector (LSS). This is the first comprehensive study of assessment procedures and practices employed across the full range of LSS contexts--school sixth…

Every year, thousands of new teachers pass through hundreds of different teacher preparation programs and are hired to teach in the nation's schools. In recent years, alternative programs have expanded rapidly. Despite the expansion of these new routes into teaching, little research exists to provide guidance on the effectiveness of different…

The Visiting Clinician Program (VCP) was established in 1996 at a public medical school to provide individualized continuing education to participants and to foster closer ties between academic health center faculty and community practitioners who serve as preceptors for health professions students. Various methods have been used to evaluate the…