O'Connor, Sean Breandan (1986) The underlying causes of some problematic responses to curriculum evaluation reports within the ethnographic tradition. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis follows the natural history of the research which gave rise to it. Working as an evaluator on a Social and Environmental Studies curriculum development project in the Republic of Ireland the author was surprised by some of the reactions to his evaluation reports. After consideration he came to the conclusion that these products of his evaluation had of themselves some sort of socio-political role.

Moving to Northern Ireland he came into contact with a number of other evaluators some of international repute, who convinced him that his experiences were not unique but were shared by other evaluators. He was helped to formulate and flesh out an Aggregate Pathology Model of reactions to evaluation products. This model represented a cumulative but not necessarily complete schema of possible negative reactions to evaluation products and included; co-option and collusion between the evaluation and the project, restrictive renegotiation of the evaluator's contract, rhetorical acceptance of the product divorced from political action, rejection of the evaluator or his product, distancing from the evaluation, a counter denunciation in which dossiers of evidence are produced to discredit the evaluation, the use of human sensitivity as an instrument of human control over the evaluation, and a 'rival product' developed as an internal counter-thrust to the independent evaluation.

Visiting this model with members of the evaluation community the author received qualified approval of its contents as a valid and useful map of many of their own evaluative experiences.

In endeavouring to ascertain what might be the cause of the pathological reactions to evaluative products Concomitant Variation Method was used to compare contrasting between-case evaluation outcomes. This enabled the establishment of constants and independent and dependent variables, in evaluation cases where typicality had been established. As a result of its application to evaluation cases three explanations are advanced as causes of pathological reactions to evaluation products. These are (1) that the products are not 'practical' in the sense identified by Schwab(2) that the pathology represents reactions to evaluation perceived as a degradation exercise (3) that evaluation products appear at nodes or decisive cusps in project activity where sensitivity is heightened.

These explanations are offered as decisive in a final case study of a curriculum evaluation this time conducted in the political and social sensitivities of Northern Ireland.

The thesis ends with a methodological appendix and a summary of the conclusions. A review of the literature covers the history of the evaluation problem of the thesis from its beginnings as a substantive critique of the testing movement and as a partial expansion from curriculum development, to the use of ethnography and other metaphors from the sciences and arts in the evaluation of curricula. The problem itself, aspects of which are covered in the literature, is next dealt with and some pertinent explanatory concepts from the social sciences are given. Finally, some published material concerning the principal evaluation cases studied in the thesis are given.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	L Education > LB Theory and practice of education L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2361 Curriculum L Education > LF Individual institutions (Europe)
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Education -- Curricula, Curriculum evaluation -- Ireland, Curriculum planning -- Ireland, Education and state -- Ireland
Official Date:	February 1986
Dates:	Date Event February 1986 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Arts Education
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Jenkins, David
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	v, 430 leaves
Language:	eng

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