ABSTRACT
The distinction between nomothetic and idiographic approaches in psychology is a venerable one. It was introduced to social science in 1894 by Wilhelm Windelband, the German philosopher of social science. As the terms have come to be used in psychology, nomothetic approaches are those concerned with establishing laws and idiographic approaches are those concerned with the intensive study of individuals. The technological view of education as a series of instructional treatments which are 'applied' to students predisposes the evaluator towards nomothetic methods, while the alternative conception will predispose evaluation towards idiographic methods. The hermeneutic approaches could hardly be described as idiographic since they seem to involve a shift of level from learning outcomes to learning context. The critical issues for idiographic evaluation are the theoretical problem of conceptualizing the nature of learning itself and the fundamentally-related methodological problem of developing techniques for eliciting and analysing the cognitive structures engaged during the learning process.
