ABSTRACT
Until quite recently school systems have rarely been equipped or even motivated to attempt to evaluate the effects of their learning and teaching activities. There seems to have been an assumption that an innovation is good per se, because it is new and unaccustomed. This idea is further reinforced if the innovation lasts, if it appears not to be doing a poorer job than the practice it has replaced, and if it does not, at the same time, disturb too much the other activities which are in progress in the school. In the words of Hilda Taba (144, p. 315):
‘Careful evaluation has not been made of the innovations of the past, nor is it being made today. This failure to assess the effects of innovations against their total outcomes has been perhaps the cause of the fact that in American education curriculum revision proceeds by replacing one scheme with another and one “approach” with another, not necessarily because objective evidence has demonstrated the merits of the one or the failures of the other, but merely because the new scheme or approach somehow has gained attention, is in “fashion” for the time being, or is championed by forceful leaders.’
