Alternative Evaluation Approaches

1. Alternative Evaluation Approaches From Chapter 5 in Fitzpatrick, Sanders, & Worthen

2. What is Evaluation(What it is Not) • It is not a scientific discipline. • Perhaps a transdiscipline (although this seems questionable). • Does not have clearly defined models. • Instead, we can identify genres (or, perhaps schools of thought related to evaluation.) • It is not theoretical. • Offers not testable proposotions.

3. Evaluation as a Collection • A collection of individual conceptions of what constitutes evaluation. • A collection of individual persuasions. • A collection of ways of thinking about evaluation. • A collection of approaches. • The earlier chapters in the book illustrate this, clearly.

4. Choosing an Evaluation Approach • The approach is conditioned by all of the following: • The audience. • The political context. • The object of the evaluation. • The budget. • The evaluator’s area of expertise. • The evaluator’s epistemological persuasion.

5. The Best Evaluation Approach? • Be eclectic. • Use the most appropriate components from each genre (or approach). • Rarely will you find a “pure” application of any one of the evaluation approaches we have examined so far.

6. Review Exercise Suppose you were asked to evaluate whether a particular phonetics program, currently being implemented in our school, should be discontinued, continued, or continued only after extensive modification. How would you conduct such an evaluation?

7. Review Exercise Imagine you have been asked to head-up a team to evaluate your school’s current mathematics program. The program has been operating for several years with little or no modification. There is a problem, however, in that your school’s math scores have, in the past two years, fallen below the district’s average. How would you proceed with the evaluation?

8. Review Exercise Your school district would like to introduce an evaluation unit (or department) to conduct evaluations both of local school programs and projects as well as larger systemwide projects. Since you have had a course on evaluation, you have been asked to serve as the head of a committee to set the direction and priorities for this unit. What are you going to do?

9. Review Exercise Your school district just received a federal grant for a program to improve secondary school attendance and reduce dropouts. The grant is to be used to fund tutors, mentors, “special assistance teams.” A particular goal of the intervention is to improve students’ attitudes toward school along with their aspirations toward graduation. cont.

10. Review Exercise cont. Another goal of the program is to imprve parental attitudes toward their children’s graduation. Again, having had a course in evaluation, you are asked to help design the evaluation of the intervention. How would you go about this task?