Waxmann: Münster
2005. 222 S.
ISBN 3-8309-1508-X
34,- €

This book is divided in three sections. Setting the Scene provides an overview of some of the key issues that have engaged educational researchers and potential "users" of educational research, as regards the evaluation of educational practices.

In the second (and largest) section of the book, Examples of curriculum development and evaluation, we draw on ten examples of science curriculum innovation to illustrate different approaches to evaluation. In each chapter, the authors describe the nature of the innovation, the problem it was intended to address and the data that have been collected to evaluate it. They describe what has been learned from these data, and what other workers in science education might learn from them.

In the final section, Evaluating innovation in science education: Some reflections, common features in the approaches used to evaluate the programmes are identified. Authors comment on the contrast between the approaches adopted and those advocated "by some parties" in what they term as "the wider debate about educational research and its quality" and why this may have come about.