Retrospective Curriculum Evaluation: An Approach to the Evaluation of Long-Term Effects

Abstract

Curriculum evaluation may be defined as systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of data that bear on the effectiveness, sufficiency, and efficiency of the program in meeting its goals or otherwise providing a public good in the absence of public harm (Jaeger 1978, p. 302). One of the major goals of the science curricula of the 1960s was to teach the structure of the disciplines. Thus, for example, the major aim of the BSCS (Biological Science Curriculum Study) to present a valid image of current biological science .... in terms of major dimensions [namely] ... the subjects to be investigated, the major generalizations and conceptual schemes. . . and the modes of investigation (Klinckman 1970, p. 9). Bruner (1960) asserts that grasping the structure of a subject is understanding in a way that permits many other things to be related to it 7). Furthermore, he says, It is indeed a fact that massive general transfer can be achieved by appropriate learning, even to the degree that learning properly under optimum conditions leads one to 'learn how to learn' 6). Cronbach (1963) supports this view as well: Outcomes of instruction are multidimensional ... The outcomes observed should include general outcomes ranging far beyond the content of the curriculum itself-attitudes, career choices, general understandings and intellectual powers, and aptitude for further learning in the field. . . (p. 675,683). The aptitude for further learning is the focus of the present study. The best way to study this outcome is to examine students who were exposed to particular learning experiences as they attempted to study new, related learning materials. The ability of students to study such new learning materials, following an extended interval between their prior and new learning, may be regarded as an indicator of the long-term effects of the prior learning. In this way, we use the evaluation of achievement in the present as a measure of the quality of learning in the past. This is a process by which one evaluates the merits of a particular instructional program in terms of its long-term effects. We shall refer to this process as retrospective evaluation. The importance of retrospective evaluation is strongly sup-