Evaluation and Appraisal in the Social Studies

Abstract

THE KINDS of evaluation instruments needed depend upon the kinds of changes schools wish to facilitate in pupils. The Educational Policies Commission (48) and the Evaluation Staff of the Progressive Education Association (51: 337) recently have made clear-cut statements about the nature of general objectives. The latter classification included (a) attitudes, (b) thinking, (c) work habits and study skills, (d) interests, (e) appreciations, (f) functional information, (g) social and emotional adjustment, (h) creativity, (i) physical health, and (j) a functioning personal philosophy. The discussion in Chapter I of this issue suggests that the social studies contribute to all the objectives just listed for general education, but especially to the first six and the last named. Because of the close relationship between objectives and lines of evaluation in a given field, the helpful treatment of the latter in the fourteenth yearbook (46: 320-40) and in The Social Studies in General Education (51: 342-76) serves to illuminate the former. The same point can be made about the descriptions by Spaulding (63: 18-120) and Wilson (71: 17-107) of evaluation procedures and results in the Regents' Inquiry. A functional analysis of how the social studies contribute to general education reveals much that is valuable but less that is unique. That perhaps is one reason why Lee (39) and Raths (22: 61), among others, argued that the areas in which measurements are made should cut across subject fields.