Through the history of program evaluation represented in the annual, federal grant applications, this study examines the developments between 1971 and 1978 in the program and evaluation design of PROVE, an open admissions program. The study compares PROVE's later evaluation criteria and instruments with the literature on educational evaluation to illustrate a model. Through interviews with six former PROVE counselors and teachers, the study explicates the program's evolution to qualified open admissions and the local standards and measures for student evaluation they devised which served program evaluation and exemplify the literature. The interviewees' anecdotes also demonstrate how practitioner collaboration and storytelling serve the process of defining and measuring learning essential for judging both student learning and program effectiveness. The study contends that telling stories offers important insights about educational assumptions unattainable in traditional, quantitative evaluation. While acknowledging that interviews and anecdotal evidence can not replace quantitative measures, the study argues that program evaluation which is limited to student performance outputs neglects critical, qualitative judgements essential for a thorough evaluation. Interviews and storytelling are undervalued vehicles for both program development and formal evaluation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-5697 |
| Date | 01 January 1984 |
| Creators | EDDY, PETER SCHUYLER |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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