ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews, in terms of a number of paradigm shifts, the changing context of ideas relating to curriculum evaluation over the last twenty years. These shifts, it is argued, have resulted in a new consensus regarding the purposes and procedures of evaluation, a consensus which is not without its own tensions and contradictions. Evaluation, as the term suggests, is inevitably concerned with human values: those espoused by individuals and groups in specific situations. And those implicit in the actual social practices to which individuals and groups are committed. In the field of curriculum evaluation these situations are located within that arena of social practice referred to as schooling. It is possible, however, by switching from an historical perspective to one which views evaluation in the present context, to define some of the characteristics of the emergent paradigm. The prime purpose of evaluation, as framed by the emergent paradigm, is to inform the immediate decisions of policy makers and practitioners.
