ABSTRACT
In December 1972 the authors convened a small working conference of people concerned with educational evaluation.1 The meeting took place at Churchill College, Cambridge, and was financed by the Nuffield Foundation. Its aim was to explore ‘non-traditional’ modes of evaluation and to set out guidelines for future developments in this field. Participants were chosen for their known reserve about established evaluation practice, or because they had suggested or experimented with new approaches.2 The conference arose out of preliminary talks between the authors and the officials of the Nuffield Foundation, the Department of Education and Science, and the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation in Paris. These talks had reflected, on the part of these agencies, a general concern that the rapid increase of evaluation activities was not being accompanied by an equivalent surge of new thinking about either evaluation methods or their usefulness for decision-making.
