Analysis of Aims and Content as a Basis for Assessment of School Courses

IN RECENT YEARS the key issues in educational reform have been concerned with the organization of the system and the structure of the curriculum. The first problem, the pattern of schooling to be followed, has been fraught with political, social and pedagogical arguments. The solutions arrived at have in some cases been radical; the measures taken to implement them are quasi-permanent, because educational institutions must eventually take shape in bricks and mortar. By contrast, the nature of the curriculum to be followed in them is easier to modify. Since, as Gaston Berger expresses it, we must 'install ourselves in mobility', the kind of learning that goes on in the schools (no less than the means to effect it) must be continually revised to meet the demands of the individual and of society. Because this is so, the evaluation of the curriculum, in order to assess its effectiveness and, where necessary, to revise it, is a task of prime importance. At the upper secondary level educationists are seeking to devise ways of assessment that will break the 'iron collar' of the once-and-for-all ordeal of the terminal examination, with its deleterious repercussions upon teaching and upon the pupils. One answer has been provided by M. Capelle, with his concept of the examen-bilan. Another is that being tried in Sweden, where evaluation is carried out at discrete intervals in the last years of secondary schooling. But, whatever the techniques of assessment adopted, it is clear that the prime consideration must be the goals and content of the curriculum. What is taught and, more important, why it is taught are therefore being subjected increasingly to critical scrutiny. The French Instructions of 1890 condemned encyclopedism and stated that the goal of secondary education was 'learning to learn', but half a century later Recteur Sarrailh was constrained to condemn the baccalaureat programmes as dementiels. Few would deny that until very recently the syllabuses of the English G.C.E. examining boards, particularly in science, have merely grown by accretion, with the amount of knowledge to be mastered swelling disproportionately. Nor are these two countries exceptional. Whilst all subscribe to the doctrine that at this level secondary schools must realize the concept of a 'liberal' or 'general' education'), the rationale for inclusion of individual subjects-or their omission-in the programme of study has never been clearly worked out. This, although the ultimate and fundamental issue, is too broad a question to be discussed here. We must rather take a leaf from our German colleagues' book and adopt the principle of exemplarische Lehre, looking at goals and content in particular relation to individual subjects, and seeing what role they play in the process of evaluation

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• Criterion-Referenced Measurement

  Open Access•William James Popham•Journal of Research in Music…•1972

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• Perspectives of curriculum evaluation

  Ralph W Tyler•Perspectives of curriculum…•1967

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