Development of Turkish program evaluation standards

Educational programs are the determinants of the characteristics of the individuals to be trained. By looking deep into the educational programs of a country or an institution, some connotations regarding educational outcomes may be carried out. Thus, the deficiencies and faults of the implemented programs should be remedied or rearranged in accordance with the changes in society and science; in other words they should be evaluated systematically. On the other hand educational programs cannot be evaluated casually. Thus, to conduct an effective program evaluation study, systematic procedures are essential as in program development studies; planning, implementation and evaluation are required. In order to handle a program evaluation in such stages, a few countries, notably the USA, have developed program evaluation standards, principles or guidelines.In Turkey, there is no study on development of program evaluation standards yet, it can be seen that many s tuidies on evalutaion of programs have been recently conducted in literature. However, most of these studies were have been focused on only one aspect of the program, and conducted as quantitative studies via questionnaires, obtained inadequate findings. In fact, these studies have been generally conducted to define course efficiency with academic anxiety. These issues reveal the need of standards or criteria to be followed/used in program evaluation studies in Turkey. Thus, to fulfil this need, new evaluation standards for program evaluations studies in Turkey should be developed on the basis of the standards which were developed in the USA by the Joint Committee and then adapted by Switzerland, Germany, Australia, Canada and Kenya. This study is thus designed to fulfil this need.This study was conducted with survey research method. The target population of this study consisted of 158 academic teaching members (experts in the field of curriculum and instruction) whose PhD is on curriculum and instruction and working in 64 education faculties of 94 state universities in 2008-2009 academic years. Out of 158 academic teaching members, 138 (%87) completed the questionnaire titled as ?Development of Turkish Program Evaluation Standards?. While analyzing the collected data, numbers, percentages, one-way ANOVA, and Tukey HSD was applied.According to the experts? views on the appropriateness of 23 evaluation standards and 110 indicators in Turkish context, the result are as follows:?All ?Utility? standards in the questionnaire (five standards) were found appropriate in Turkish context and of 24 indicators of these standards 21 indicators were approved for Turkey. On the other hand three indicators were found inappropriate. The mean of ?Utility? domain (4.10) showed that the experts accepted five standards with their 21 indicators as ?Utility? standards for Turkey.?Of four standards under ?Feasibility? domain, three were found appropriate and one found partly appropriate. Additionally, the experts approved 13 indicators of 17, but refused four indicators? appropriateness to Turkish context. The mean of ?Feasibility? domain (3.96) indicated that the experts accepted four standards with their 13 indicators as ?Feasibility? standards for Turkey.?The appropriateness of six ?Propriety? standards and 30 indicators to Turkish context were approved by the participants, but the three indicators were found inappropriate for Turkey. The mean of ?Propriety? domain (4.21) showed that the experts accepted six standards with their 30 indicators as ?Propriety? standards for Turkey.?All ?Accuracy? standards in the questionnaire (eight standards) and 30 indicators were approved by the experts as appropriate for Turkey. However six indicators were found inappropriate by the experts. The mean of ?Accuracy? domain (4.09) indicated that the experts accepted eight standards with their 30 indicators as ?Accuracy? standards for Turkey.?According to the experts? views, the differences between the appropriateness level of standard domains are statistically significant. This is caused due to the difference between ?Feasibility? domain and ?Propriety? domain.Consequently, it can be concluded that under the four domains, 23 of 23 standards and 94 of 110 indicators were accepted as Turkish program evaluation standards and indicators according to the experts? views.