International Handbook of Educational Evaluation

Thomas Kellaghan Educational Research Centre, St. Patrick's College, Dublin, Ireland Daniel L. Stufflebeam The Evaluation Center, Western Michigan University, Ml, USA Lori A. Wingate The Evaluation Center, Western Michigan University, Ml, USA Educational evaluation encompasses a wide array of activities, including student assessment, measurement, testing, program evaluation, school personnel evalua- tion, school accreditation, and curriculum evaluation. It occurs at all levels of education systems, from the individual student evaluations carried out by class- room teachers, to evaluations of schools and districts, to district-wide program evaluations, to national assessments, to cross-national comparisons of student achievement. As in any area of scholarship and practice, the field is constantly evolving, as a result of advances in theory, methodology, and technology; increasing globalization; emerging needs and pressures; and cross-fertilization from other disciplines. The beginning of a new century would seem an appropriate time to provide a portrait of the current state of the theory and practice of educational evaluation across the globe. It is the purpose of this handbook to attempt to do this, to sketch the international landscape of educational evaluation - its conceptual- izations, practice, methodology, and background, and the functions it serves. The book's 43 chapters, grouped in 10 sections, provide detailed accounts of major components of the educational evaluation enterprise. Together, they provide a panoramic view of an evolving field.

Review:

...this handbook should be in the library of each higher education institute, faculty, research group and/or R&D institute dealing with or working in the domain of evaluation and assessment... A further inspection of the book shows that an interesting strength of the book is how the section editors perceived their roles. In most cases they not only introduce and position their section authors, but they also provide a view of how they see their parts of the field. (Tjeerd Plomp in Perspectives in Education, 21:1 (April 2003)