Raviv, A. (1993). Environmental Approach Used for Evaluating an Educational Innovation.. Journal of Educational Research, 86(6). 317-324.

910812 蔡明翰

Abstract

An environment assessment was used to compare an experimental high school that had incorporated Corsini’s (1977) individual education program with a relatively conventional high school.

Introduction

  1. The learning outcomes reflect academic achievement and social factors, but they exclude the multidimensional processes that are not only more difficult to define but also to assess.
  2. The classroom learning environment is, therefore, a comprehensive concept including student-teacher and student-student interactions, teaching style, physical setting, and organization factors such as size and the number of students in a class(Moss, 1987).
  3. Environmental Approach
  4. Low-inference: to explore specific and objective environmental components such as the number of student-teacher exchanges in a given day.
  5. High-inference: applied in the body of research that operationally defines the classroom environment in psychological terms, usually consist of specific dimensions representing the following three environmental domains: relationship,personal development and goal orientation,and system maintenance.
  6. Corsini’s individual education program:
  7. The quality of student – teacher relationship is stressed.
  8. 4R: Responsibility, Respect, Resourcefulness, Responsiveness.

Method

  1. Subjects:
  2. ExperimentalSchool: 13 classes.
  3. ControlSchool: 14 classes.
  4. Instruments:

The social climate of each classroom was measured by the Real form of the CES, consists of 90 true-false items divided into 9 dimensions within 3 domains:

  1. Relationship domain – consists of involvement, affiliation, and teacher support dimensions.
  2. Goal orientation and personal development domain – consists of task orientation and competition dimension.
  3. System maintenance domain – consists of order and organization, rule clarify, teacher control, and innovation dimensions.
  1. Procedure

Within the homeroom classes, the instructions for each questionnaire were read aloud and subsequently completed by the students and teachers.

Result

  1. Comparison of Experimental and control schools

  1. Comparison of classes’ and teachers’ dimension scores

  1. Comparison of classes’ and normative samples’ CES scores

Discussion

  1. The results of the present study not only support the research hypothesis regarding the respective emphasis of environmental dimensions in the two schools but also indicate the value of using the CES as a criterion variable in the comparison of high school class environments.
  2. The individual educational philosophy successfully influences not only the quality of interpersonal relationship but also the division of responsibility among students and educational staff.