Evaluation: Themes and Perspectives

Abstract

This is an analytical study portraying the perspectives of the education-related evaluation models which arose from the 1960's to the 1980's. To drive the historical perspectives, it is necessary to clearly clarify the themes that underlie the evaluation models, and grasp the educational ideas. This study, therefore, is primarily designed to clarify evaluation themes, and, based on them, present historical perspectives from a series of well-developed evaluation models. Furthermore, the representations of the past evaluation perspectives or ideas are expected to help envisioning future evaluation studies.The methodology that this study proposes is a method of meta-evaluation-i. e., an evaluation of the evaluation and/or an appraisal of evaluation. The meta-evaluation that this study clarifies is the quality of evaluation in terms of concentrating on assessing the underlying value considerations, evaluation strategies (program focus and political issues), and techniques (credibility of evaluation reports to the audiences). Value considerations, evaluation strategies, and credibility are thus used here as the themes to present the perspectives of evaluation models.The meta-evaluation that presents the historical perspectives will conceptualize the evaluation models into three chronological categories: (1) effectiveness, (2) feasibility, and (3) value (meaning). The models placed in the first category (effectiveness-focused) that concerns the effectiveness of evaluations were intended to provide information to determine whether or not an innovative program is effective when implemented in a school setting. The feasibility-focused models set out to evaluate whether or not a social action program was feasible whiie the models presumed that social action programs were essentially political and different opinions and conflicts. Finally, the value-focused models are to evaluate whether or not a local educational program is worthwhile when implemented in a particular educational setting, for example, a classroom and/or school.Based on each of the themes that I have clarified, this study will present the perspectives throughout the evaluation models in chronological bases-effectiveness, feasebility and value (meaning).