Given decision-makers often prioritize causal research that identifies the impact of treatments on the people they serve, a key question in education research is, "Does it work?". Today, however, researchers are paying increasing attention to successive questions that are equally important from a practical standpoint--not only does it…

Premised on the idea that evaluators should be familiar with a range of approaches to program modifications, I review several existing approaches and then describe another, less well-recognized option. In this newer option, evaluators work with others to identify potentially needed adaptations for select program aspects "in advance." In…

The article revisits the literature on educational partnerships in an attempt to re-frame and update conceptual frameworks to be used by school and district leaders for partnership development and evaluation. It also synthesizes and analyzes empirical literature specific to developing educational partnerships or analyzing the strengths that…

Duplicating processes and procedure with anticipation of deviating outcomes is the defining trait of insanity as attributed to a quote by Albert Einstein. It is the antithesis to innovation, which is what is needed in higher education to create impactful changes in the outreach we should be providing to the community. What is important for those…

The evaluation of intervention effects is an important objective of educational research. One way to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention is to conduct an experiment that assigns individuals to control and treatment groups. In the context of pretest/posttest designed studies, this is referred to as a control-group pretest/posttest design.…

Character education specialists seem to know it when they see it, but what it means to call something a character education program remains unclear. One possible source for this uncertainty is the manner in which character education has been defined. By identifying certain features as necessary, existing definitions fail to encompass the universe…

Wills and Pothos (2012) reviewed approaches to evaluating formal models of categorization, raising a series of worthwhile issues, challenges, and goals. Unfortunately, in discussing these issues and proposing solutions, Wills and Pothos (2012) did not consider Bayesian methods in any detail. This means not only that their review excludes a major…

Despite embracing a bio-psycho-social perspective, the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) assessment framework has had limited application to date with children who have special educational needs (SEN). This study examines its utility for educational psychologists' work with…

Classification evaluation metrics are often used to evaluate adaptive tutoring systems-- programs that teach and adapt to humans. Unfortunately, it is not clear how intuitive these metrics are for practitioners with little machine learning background. Moreover, our experiments suggest that existing convention for evaluating tutoring systems may…

With the advancements in the WWW and ICT, the e-learning domain has developed very fast. Even many educational institutions these days have shifted their focus towards the e-learning and mobile learning environments. However, from the quality of learning point of view, which is measured in terms of "active learning" taking place, the…

There are many different models or approaches to doing program evaluation. Fitzpatrick, Sanders, and Worthen classify them into five general approaches: (a) objectives oriented, (b) management oriented, (c) consumer oriented, (d) expertise oriented, and (e) participant oriented. Within each of these general categories, of course, reside many…

Outcomes-based program evaluation is a systematic approach to identifying outcome indicators and measuring results against those indicators. One dimension of program evaluation is assessing the level of learner acquisition to determine if learning objectives were achieved as intended. The purpose of the proposed model is to use Bloom's Taxonomy to…

The educational achievement and attainment of young people in the United States has been a long-standing issue of concern. While analyses of long-term trend data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that students in the United States have made gains in reading and mathematics over the past few decades, a sizeable…

Presents a conceptual framework for putting program theory into operation. The framework incorporates variables that reflect theoretical concepts and implementation issues addressed in program evaluation. It organizes variables into input, process, and output categories. Discusses implications for program evaluation. (SLD)

This monograph identifies, analyzes, and judges 22 evaluation approaches used in program evaluation. Two approaches, labeled psuedoevaluations, are politically oriented and often used to misrepresent a program's value. The remaining 20, judged legitimate, are categorized by their orientations, and rated for their value. (SLD)