Curriculum Evaluation

Simply put, curriculum evaluation refers to the process of placing value on a curriculum. Evaluation may focus on a curriculum's design, including content and process; its implementation; or outcomes. It may take place on a broad scale, for example, evaluation of the scope and sequence of a state's K–12 curriculum in all subject areas. Or it may be more specific, as in the evaluation of textbooks adopted for a school district's spelling curriculum in Grades 1 through 6, or a teacher's own test of a curriculum's outcomes. Evaluation may be national or local; external, involving outside reviewers or internal; or involving teacher and student judgment. Although curriculum is ordinarily associated with schools, curriculum evaluation occurs within any institution that educates through a formal curriculum, for example, religious organizations, businesses, hospitals, museums, and libraries. Curriculum evaluation is often thought of as summative, but usually involves both formative and summative procedures. It may be informal, drawing on a variety of teacher-made techniques or a formal process that utilizes standard procedures and instruments.

Curriculum evaluation schemes reflect different philosophical stances regarding education and range from highly rational and objective to interpretive and subjective approaches. In a rational process, curriculum evaluation is tied to objectives. Evaluation determines whether or not objectives and the learning experiences designed to achieve them produce desired changes in student behavior. Interpretive models are intentionally subjective and rely on observing and recording of experience, immersion of the evaluator in a situation, interpretation, and judgment. The goal is to disclose events, their worth, and quality.