Seven articles focus on child and adolescent mental health services, highlighting major evaluation issues, considering the contribution of evaluation to improvement of these services, and describing efforts to overcome distinctive problems in these areas. Policymakers and providers of services are optimistic about the use of evaluation of program…

Maintains that new practices such as performance-based assessment that are consistent with the early childhood profession's process goals need to be developed and that testing of young children that is not developmentally appropriate constitutes misassessment. Promotes observational assessment that uses anecdotal notes and that complements…

Discusses the Management and Planning System (MAPS), a developmental assessment system initiated in Head Start. The system consists of instruments which assess preschoolers' and kindergartners' development of math, science, literacy, and social skills and children's motor development. Describes the use and benefits of MAPS observational…

Proposes methods by which laboratory practical exams may be structured to assess outcomes from laboratory instruction. Presents eight general considerations for writing and using practical exams. Describes four example laboratory exams involving a box camera, circuit boxes, floating objects, and light. (MDH)

Thirty-two content evaluation studies of teacher licensure tests were reviewed; and methodological differences were noted regarding evaluation focus, the stringency of the charge to expert panelists, and the manner in which panelists' ratings were analyzed. Normative expectations for such content ratings are prepared. (SLD)

Introducing a wider perspective of evaluation into the school by developing school-based evaluation mechanisms is discussed. The approach is based on conceptual development derived from U.S. perspectives on program evaluation, actual work in schools with teachers and principals in Israel, and empirical studies in the United States. (SLD)

Presents brief history, written for school counselors, on entrance examinations used in college and university admission procedures, noting use of such examinations as early as fourteenth century. Discusses College Entrance Examination Board, Scholastic Aptitude Test, multiple-choice versus essay tests, score distributions, American College…

Discussion of computer-based second-language learning focuses on a study of elementary school students in grades four through six who used a contextualized computer environment that was designed to provide precommunicative practice with Spanish. Highlights include student roles in small groups, cooperative learning, and the teacher's role.…

The process and aims of university evaluation are discussed from the perspectives of the evaluation commission, university vice-chancellor, and dean of faculty of forestry at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, evaluated by the ministry of agriculture. Focus on the link between quality assessment and educational improvement is…

Examines the descriptive and analytical work of students and teachers through classroom talk and interaction, using information from audiotaped classroom activities to identify classroom members' work. The article discusses the organization of classroom knowledge, relationships, and order, noting relationships between descriptive and analytic work…

A national survey of assistant and associate pharmacy professors (n=491) found differences between disciplines in time allocation, number of publications, and research funding. Time, lack of funding, and need for research assistants were commonly identified as impediments to research productivity. A quantitative method for evaluating productivity…

Looks at teaching methods and the effects on student performance. Examines beginning teachers interactions with 84 nonmusic major students. Assesses components of proactive teaching and self-perceptions of success. Focuses on teacher feedback in relation to student success. Recommends professionals apply task analysis principles to music learning…

Designed for use with individuals ages 3 months to 44 years, the Scales of Independent Behavior (SIB) measure adaptive behavior and problem behaviors in such areas as motor skills, social interaction, language, personal self-care, punctuality, destructiveness, and inattention. This paper describes the SIB's administration, scoring,…

A case study illustrates the ways in which local reactions to a program evaluation directly threaten its validity, and shows that not all participants in a qualitative evaluation study understand or defer to the commitments of democratic evaluation. Ethical concerns in program evaluation are considered. (SLD)

Considers student-teacher observation and evaluation as processes that define proper behavior and construct social forms of teaching behavior. Discusses documentary records on student-teachers' development. Analyzes nineteenth-century Training Registers of the Ontario Provincial Model School in terms of students' characteristics and evaluations,…