Educational Evaluation: Classic Works of Ralph W. Tyler

314 Pages·1988·7.845 MB·English

by  George F. Madaus, Daniel L. Stufflebeam (auth.), George F. Madaus, Daniel L. Stufflebeam (eds.)

Educational Evaluation:
Classic Works of Ralph W. Tyler
Educational Evaluation:
Classic Works of Ralph W. Tyler
Compiled and Edited
by
George F. Madaus and Daniel L. Stufflebeam
~.
Kluwer Academic Publishers
"
Boston Dordrecht London
Distributors
for the United States and Canada: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101
Philip Drive, Assinippi Park, Norwell, MA 02061.
for the UK and Ireland: Kluwer Academic Publishers, Falcon House,
Queen Square, Lancaster LAI IRN, UK.
for all other countries: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group,
Distribution Centre, P. O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The
Netherlands
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tyler, Ralph Winfred, 1902-
Educational evaluation: classical works of Ralph W. Tyler/
edited by George F. Madaus and Daniel Stufflebeam.
p. cm. - (Evaluation in education and human services)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-94-010-7708-8 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-2679-0
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-2679-0
1. Educational tests and measurements-United States
Collected works. 2. Students-United States-Rating of
Collected works.
I. Madaus, George F. II. Stufflebeam, Daniel L. III. Title.
IV. Series.
LB3051. T93 1988
371.2'6-dc19 88-833
CIP
© 1989 by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1989
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publishers.
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Assinippi Park,
Norwell, MA 02061
Contents
Foreword vii
Preface xi
Part I The Service Study Years: 1929 to 1938 1
1 3
Overview
Key Points
2 7
Service Studies in Higher Education
Introduction
The Construction of Examinations in Botany and Zoology
3 17
Constructing Achievement Tests
Measuring the Results of College Instruction
A Generalized Technique for Constructing Achievement Tests
Formulating Objectives for Tests
Ability To Use Scientific Method
Explanation Test
Measuring the Ability To Infer
A Test of Skill in Using the Microscope
The Master-List as a Device
Improving Test Materials in the Social Studies
Assumptions Involved in Achievement-Test Construction
What Is Statistical Significance?
Making a Co-operative Test Service Effective
Techniques for Evaluating Behavior
Notes
Part II Appraising and Recording Student Progress: The Eight-Year 87
Study
1 M
Overview
v
vi CONTENTS
Key Points
2 93
Appraising and Recording Student Progress
Preface
Commission on the Relation of School and College
Purposes and Procedures of the Evaluation Staff
Aspects of Thinking
Evaluation of Social Sensitivity
Aspects of Appreciation
Interpretation and Uses of Evaluation Data
Philosophy and Objectives
Teachers' Reports and Reports to the Home
Notes
Part III Tyler's Rationale for Curriculum Development 197
1 199
Overview
Key Points
2 201
New Dimensions in Curriculum Development
Part IV National Testing Programs 209
1 211
Overview
Key Points
2 215
Appraisal of Edu'cational Achievement Gained in the Armed
Forces
3 223
The Objectives and Plans for a National Assessment of
Educational Progress
4 227
National Assessment - Some Valuable By-Products for
Schools
Note
Part V Tyler's Recent Reflections on His Work 239
1 241
Overview
Key Points
2 243
An Interview with Ralph Tyler
The Preface Interview
3 273
Appendix: Vitae of Ralph Winfred Tyler
Part VI A Chronological Bibliography 275
Index 307
Foreword
I personally learned to know Ralph Tyler rather late in his career when, in
the 1960s, I spent a year as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in
the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. His term of office as Director of the
Center was then approaching its end. This would seem to disqualify me
thoroughly from preparing a Foreword to this "Classic Works." Many of
his colleagues and, not least, of his students at his dear Alma Mater, the
University of Chicago, are certainly better prepared than I to put his role
in American education in proper perspective. The reason for inviting me is,
I assume, to bring out the influence that Tyler has had on the international
educational scene. I am writing this Foreword on a personal note. Ralph
Tyler's accomplishments in his roles as a scholar, policy maker, educational
leader, and statesman have been amply put on record in this book, not least
in the editors' Preface. My reflections are those of an observer from abroad
but who, over the last 25 years, has been close enough to overcome the
aloofness of the foreigner.
Tyler has over many years been criss-crossing the North American con
tinent generously giving advice to agencies at the federal, state, and local
levels, lecturing, and serving on many committees and task forces that
have been instrumental in shaping American education. Several years ago,
Tyler'S famous student, Benjamin Bloom, told me that he and a group of
colleagues had ventured a guess of how much of his life Tyler had spent in
airplanes. They came up with an estimate of two years! One Saturday morn
ing in the mid-1960s when I drove up to the Stanford Center I ran across
Ralph whom I had not seen for the whole week. I knew that he - as usual
- had been busy with many things at many places, but in particular with
the preparatory work for the National Assessment of Educational Pro
gress. I asked him: "Ralph, how often do you cross the American conti
nent?" With the typical sense of humor pouring through his peering eyes
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viii FOREWORD
he replied: "I am trying to keep it down to one tour per week."
Ralph Tyler's fellow countrymen are perhaps less familiar with his inter
national than his national impact. As a graduate student in the early 1940s
(during the war when scholarly communications were scarce) I obtained a
copy of a report from the Eight-Year Study that, along with his subsequent
book on the basic principles of curriculum and instruction, soon began to
be regarded as a classic. These and other publications from the 1940s pro
vided a solid empirical foundation for those of us who conducted studies
in educational psychology.
During the early stages of his career, Ralph· Tyler was instrumental in
developing relevant examinations in specific subject matter fields and he laid
the ground for better methods of achievement testing. Psychometricians
had, around 1930, developed techniques of measuring certain psychological
traits, but Tyler adapted these techniques to suit achievement testing. He
widened the horizon with his famous rationales for both evaluation and cur
riculum construction. It was certainly part of the logic of the events that he
was the one who, in due time, provided the rationale for a national assess
ment of educational progress.
What strikes me, both in reading this book and in reflecting on my close
contacts with American educators, is how seminal Tyler has been with his
ideas, not least through his own students. Tyler's bibliography at the end
of this book carries a large number of articles in a variety of professional
journals (educational and others) in which he acts as a builder of bridges
between theory and practice. No wonder, then, that he has been a much
sought after consultant and has been asked to nominate superintendents,
deans, and other leading people in the educational enterprise.
To me - and, I think to many of my colleagues around the world -
Ralph Tyler stands out as the leading figure in American educational
research and evaluation - indeed as Mr. Education himself. During the
"classical period" epitomized in this book, he advanced his evaluation
theory and its applications as well as the principles of curriculum and
instruction. It was therefore no surprise to me during my first year at his
Center to find that he was the central figure and the idea injector in the
enterprise later known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Apart from the intellectual leadership required to establish this new system
of national evaluation, he had to develop a skillful diplomacy in order
to overcome the deep suspicion that many people held against centrally
organized assessment. It smelled of federal intrusion.
Neither was it a surprise to me to learn that Tyler emerged as the leading
figure in the establishment of a U.S. National Academy of Education. He
served as its president for quite some time and his contribution gave it
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FOREWORD
a high status both within and outside the educational community. As a
Foreign Associate of the Academy, I had ample opportunity to observe
how, in conducting business during our meetings, he could draw upon an
inexhaustible body of experience and could sprinkle the sessions with his
witty remarks and anecdotes.
The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational
Achievement (lEA), on Ben Bloom's initiative, decided in 1971 to organize
an international seminar in Sweden on curriculum development and evalua
tion. The seminar went on for six weeks with some 125 participants from
more than 23 nations. Ralph Tyler was the self-evident choice as the key lec
turer. We succeeded in holding him for the whole 6-week period in the little
town of Granna in Sweden. This was, indeed, quite an achievement. I
wondered whether Ralph had stayed for such a long time at the same place
at any time in his adult life!
When a person comes to our mind, we tend to imagine him or her in
concrete situations. In my case, what particularly stands out in recalling
encounters with Tyler is a walk with him late one evening from the Inter
national House to the Quadrangle Club (where we were both staying) at the
University of Chicago - that great institution where Tyler had spent so
many productive years and had been instrumental in bringing its Education
Department to the forefront, not only in the United States but in the whole
world. I heard him often use the expression "cutting edge." He wanted to
be part of it. As we passed Judd Hall that evening, Ralph gave me a detailed
and vivid account of how education was established at the University during
the Dewey era around the turn of the century. This was a fascinating piece
of history of education.
Hardly have we on many occasions seized on any topic of conversation
before Ralph's immense knowledge of individuals and his interest in their
biographies flourished. He is a living Who's Who in American education,
and has an encyclopedic grasp of the educational enterprise. Many of us
have experienced how he, without even a piece of paper with its main points
in his hands, could give a well-structured lecture on almost any topic in
education. The Annual Meeting Programs of AERA still carry Tyler's name
in several sessions and symposia. He is, indeed, a great generalist in a field
where short-sighted specialization, as in other scholarly areas, is gradually
creeping in.
We are all, to varying degrees, prisoners of prevalent "paradigms," a
term that (it is well known) was coined at the University of Chicago in the
early 1960s. Ralph Tyler's contributions to modern thinking in education
as epitomized in this volume have, in a remarkable way, survived the change
of time and paradigms. He has been able to cut through generations of
x FOREWORD
educational scholars, which is no surprise to those of us who have seen the
rapport that he is able to establish with young people. This timelessness is,
in my view, the main reason why it has been considered fitting to collate his
lasting contributions to educational scholarship. They have, indeed,
withstood the test of time.
The emphasis in the present collection is naturally on publications from
Tyler's early and mid-career - periods when he apparantly had more time
to devote to the writing of major, monographic pieces. He had not yet been
submerged in the many activities that took him around his home country
and the world at large. His creativity and accomplishments as an innovator
did by no means diminish after he left Chicago for the Stanford Center in
the early 1950s. The Bibliography attached to this book bears witness to
this.
American public education has been intermittently under fire and sub
jected to severe criticism during the post-war years. Those of us on the other
side of the Atlantic who in various capacities have been involved in reform
ing the school systems in our home countries have, since the 1940s, been
looking at the American public school as a model because of its role as a
pillar of American democracy. Ralph Tyler has, during his entire career,
always held a strong commitment to free public education that takes care
of all children from all walks of life and all ethnic backgrounds - a school
providing the same conditions and having them under a common roof.
Tyler has seen his task as one of giving service to that school.
Dr. Tyler now lives in Milpitas, California. When I last visited
California, somebody gave me a clipping from the San Jose Mercury News
of an article published on his 85th birthday. He was presented as a person
whose "main problem" since he was young had been "excess energy,"
something that was behind the opposition that brought him into trouble in
high school. He is quoted as saying, after consulting his doctor, that as long
as he is active he has no reason to worry about health. He has kept so much
of his youthfulness and a combination of seriousness and levity of mind
that has been behind his inspiring achievements.
Dr. Torsten Husen, President
International Academy of Education
Preface
For nearly 60 years, Ralph W. Tyler has been one of the most influential
figures in education, at all levels both nationally and internationally. He has
made substantial contributions to the fields of curriculum, testing, evalua
tion, and educational policy. Directly through his work, and indirectly
through his many famous students, he has deeply influenced many note
worthy developments in education, including objective-referenced testing,
objectives-based program evaluation, mastery learning, achievement test
construction, item banking, the taxonomic classification of educational out
comes, and cooperative test development. He has been instrumental in the
development of several national testing programs including the General
Educational Development Program, the Cooperative Testing Program, and
the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
During the past half-century, Tyler's role in education may easily be
labeled that of educational statesman. He has been an advisor to pre
sidents, legislators, and national and international commissions. He has
helped local schools, school districts, colleges and universities, and state
departments of education in the United States and in numerous overseas
countries. His work and influence have always been grounded in practical
experience, oriented to service, and dedicated to improvement and progress
in education. His work reflects his brilliance and vision. His life's work has
been governed by a keen sense of values, equity, and fairness. Throughout
his career his work shows his humility and sense of humor - the latter often
at his own expense.
Tyler's writings chronicle his ideas and projects over the years. His
writings are filled with rich and instructive examples that still illuminate
many contemporary theories, practices, and policies in education. Students
of education can greatly increase their understanding of education's history
and progress since the 1930s through a review of Tyler's work. Some of his
xi