A Frontal Attack on the Basic Problem in Evaluation

Abstract

Educators have long busied themselves with developing statements of objectives for the sec ondary school and for specific areas or sub jects in the curriculum. Few educators have attempted to relate these objectives to second ary school practices in a realistic manner. Science educators are not excepted. Out of the profuse Uterature there has emerged a fairly clear-cut body of objectives. Mere lip service in regard to these objectives is hardly suffic ient to produce a realistic program of instruc tion, which should: (1) include continuous meas urement and evaluation; (2) utilize those fac tors in the teaching situation which contribute most to student achievement of the objectives; and (3) demand rigorous research in and inves tigation of science instruction to the end that it might be improved. The writer believed that science education needed a study which would endeavor to: (1) alert science educators to con tinuous measurement and evaluation; (2) reveal those factors in the teaching situation which would contribute most to the achievement of ob jectives; and (3) be rigorous in its design and method. The present study, therefore, was de signed not as a flanking movement, but as a frontal attack on the basic problem in evalua tion: the achievement of the objectives of in struction, or specifically, the relative achieve ments of the objectives of science instruction in a representative sampling of schools.