The Use of Qualitative Forms of Evaluation For Improving Educational Practice

During the past five years my students at Stanford and I have been attempting to develop and articulate, both theoretically and practically, a qualitative, artistically grounded approach to educational evaluation. My interest in such an approach has developed out of an uneasiness that I have long felt with the tacit assumptions and explicit procedures embedded in conventional methods of evaluation. These methods participate in a tradition that has occupied a commanding position, not only in the field of evaluation, but in educational research as well. That tradition, as is well-known, is rooted in the aspiration to apply the methods of science to the study and explanation of social phenomena. It is a tradition that undergirds most departments of psychology, sociology, and economics. It is a tradition upon which most of the prestigious schools and departments of education in the universities of this country have been built, and it is a tradition into which most aspiring doctoral students are socialized.