ABSTRACT
The contemporary debate about the nature and significance of developments in progressive educational practice raises general questions about the role of research and its relationship to evaluation of innovation in education. Traditional models of evaluation which judge innovative school programmes on the basis of outcomes in limited areas of the skill achievement measured over a short period of time have been challenged. Supporters of such models have often presented them as free from any concerns outside their science and have neglected to examine the consequences arising from the inescapably political nature of evaluation. Some researchers, emphasizing the value-commitment that is implicit in all types of evaluation and research efforts in education, have suggested a new role as partisan. Attention has been particularly paid to one of the underdeveloped areas of traditional research and evaluation - the question of information feedback.
