ABSTRACT
This is the first of two chapters about the evaluation of provision for children’s learning in science. As we noted at the beginning of Chapter 15, the term ‘evaluation’ is used in education in relation to educational programmes, systems, or effectiveness of the provision for learning at school and classroom levels. This distinguishes it from ‘assessment’, which is a similar process but used in relation to pupils’ performance and achievement of learning goals. Both terms refer to a process of generating and interpreting evidence in order to make judgements for a particular purpose. In both cases the purpose can be formative – helping to improve teaching in the case of formative assessment, or to improve learning opportunities in the case of formative evaluation – or summative, in providing summative judgements of achievement. Also common to both is that they require criteria or standards against which the evidence is compared.
