UNIT 4: CURRICULUM EVALUATION

UNIT 4: CURRICULUM EVALUATION

Unit 4 Outline

Definitions

Purpose

Types/Forms:

Formative

 Summative

Approaches to Curriculum Evaluation

Tyler’s  Evaluation Model

Stufflebeam’s CIPP Evaluation Model

Definition of Curriculum  Evaluation

• A process or cluster of processes that people perform in order to gather data that will enable them to decide whether to accept, change, or eliminate somethingthe curriculum in general or an educational textbook in particular,(Ornstein & Hunkins, 1998).
• The formal determination of the quality, effectiveness, or value of a programme, product, project, process, objective, or curriculum (Worthen and Sanders, 1987).

The process of studying the merit or worth of some aspects or the whole of a curriculum. The provision of information for the sake of facilitating decision making at various stages of curriculum development. McNeil (1977) states that “curriculum evaluation is an attempt to throw light on two questions: Do planned learning opportunities, programmes, courses and activities as developed and organised actually produce desired results? How can the curriculum offerings best be improved?”

Oliva (1988) defined curriculum evaluation as the process of delineating, obtaining, and providing useful information for judging decision alternatives. The primary decision alternatives to consider based upon the evaluation results are to:

maintain the curriculum as it is;

modify the curriculum; or

eliminate the curriculum.

Purpose of Curriculum  Evaluation

The aim of curriculum evaluation is to:

 identify its weaknesses and strengths as well as problems encountered in implementation; improve the curriculum development process;

determine the effectiveness of the curriculum and the returns on finance allocated.

Gay (1985)

Types/Forms of Curriculum Evaluation

There are two main categories of evaluation. These are based on when the stage at which information is gathered.  Formative Summative

Formative Evaluation

The term formative indicates that data is gathered during the formation or development of the curriculum so that revisions to it can be made. It may include determining ◦ who needs the programme (eg. secondary school students), ◦ how great is the need (eg. students need to be taught ICT skills to keep pace with expansion of technology) and ◦ how to meet the need (eg. introduce a subject on ICT compulsory for all secondary schools students).

In education, the aim of formative evaluation is usually to obtain information to improve a programme

• In formative evaluation, experts would evaluate the match between the instructional strategies and materials used, and the learning outcomes or what it aims to achieve.
• Formative evaluation by experts is useful before full-scale implementation of the programme. This provides useful information for modifying or revising selected strategies.
• In formative evaluation, learners may be included to review the materials to determine if they can use the new materials.
• From these formative reviews, problems may be discovered, for example, a curriculum document may contain spelling errors, confusing sequence of content, inappropriate examples or illustrations. The feedback obtained could be used to: ◦revise and improve instruction or ◦decide whether or not to adopt the programme before full implementation.

Summative Evaluation

• The term summative indicates that data is collected at the end of the implementation of the curriculum programme.
• Summative evaluation can occur just after new course materials have been implemented in full or several months to years after the materials have been implemented in full.
• Questions to answer during summative evaluation:

◦Have learners achieved the objectives?

◦Has the programme produced the desired outcomes?

• Was the innovation cost-effective? • Was the innovation efficient in terms of time to completion?
• Were there any unexpected outcomes? Besides, quantitative data to determine how well students met specified objectives, data could also include qualitative interviews, direct observations, and document analyses.