The focus of this article is on the contextual nature of structure and its influence on organizational assessment and learning. Assessment mechanisms are part of the organization's learning system, whereby it reflects on its actions and alters its notions of how the internal and external world work. (Author/LMO)

Advises principals to back up their impressions of teachers' performance by using three types of documentation: informal (logging incidents and actions during the school year), formal (classroom observations); and summative (year-end, written evaluations of each teacher's overall performance). Sound instructional leadership requires documentation…

Assessment of elementary school students' knowledge about science is essential. Despite the existence of curricular materials and assessment tools for science content and concepts at all grade levels, there is very little information on how to assess the science process skills that students are expected to learn through science instruction. This…

Examines a popular perceptual construct, user satisfaction, through a review of information systems effectiveness literature. Problems with this construct are highlighted, social psychology literature is used to clarify these problems, and principles are offered for utilizing user satisfaction as a measure of information systems effectiveness.…

Describes assessment in the German school system as regular, systematic, and officially controlled through legislation. Emphasizes that even strict grading levels combine criterion and norm referencing because teacher determination must include a subjective element. Concludes that other systems may best learn negative lessons from the German…

Describes the frustrations and successes of seeking student accountability through the assessment of comprehension in literature discussions. Presents journal entries and discussions from three teachers. (MG)

Discusses five fallacies that can arise in the design and analysis of student questionnaires regarding teaching materials used in Australian distance education courses, including student objectivity, student subject knowledge, notions of relevance, author responsibility for student learning, and faulty generalization in evaluating student…

In early December 2005, the School District of Philadelphia announced that, for the fourth consecutive year, students showed measurable improvement on standardized, nationally normed TerraNova tests. The school's good performance was induced by a well managed instructional program that includes data-driven instruction and decision-making…

During the last few years, a national quality assessment system for evaluation of the core activities of universities has been established in Sweden. Beyond participating in these national efforts, Lund University has also participated in the European benchmarking programme managed by ESMU (European Centre for Strategic Management of…

Documenting treatment integrity is an important issue in research and practice in any discipline concerned with prevention and intervention. However, consensus concerning the dimensions of treatment integrity and how they should be measured has yet to emerge. Advances from three areas in which significant treatment integrity work has taken…

This paper examines practical and theoretical problems and issues that arose during evaluation of an adventure program for young offenders. During 1989-93, the Sail Training Association and the Humberside (England) Probation Service collaborated on a project in which probation clients aged 17-25 made sailing voyages across the North Sea or around…

This paper describes ten generic characteristics that are essential for the meaningful evaluation of a teacher education program. A summary is offered of each characteristic, problems that can be encountered if the characteristic is ignored, and how the characteristic is essential to the operation of program evaluation. These ten characteristics…

The papers presented at this symposium offer discussions on the program evaluation needs of three categories of teacher education institutions. An introductory paper examines state-of-the-art teacher education program evaluation, the requirements of national and regional accreditation agencies, and the evaluation requirements involved in the state…

A review of existing emotional disorder assessment techniques confirmed that they are inappropriate for most children and adolescents with developmental disabilities and pay inadequate attention to affective symptoms in these subjects. A new instrument designed to evaluate mood and affect which has shown good interrater agreement is described.…

Clearly stated educational objectives can help in educational evaluation. Because objectives sans assessment are little more than rhetoric, criterion-referenced tests are advocated for assessing objective-attainment. Performance standards are viewed as appropriately separable from objectives. Five guidelines regarding objectives are suggested for…