FOREWORD AND EDITOR'S NOTE
The success or failure of a programme or an activity is directly related to the effectiveness of its constituents, viz., the design, arrangement for its supervision, training of the functionaries, adequacy in the flow of inputs and the like. The assessment of results of any such programme or activity with reference to every constituent at various stages of their progress is called evaluation. In fact, it is a primary factor for monitoring the functions as a whole and to see whether each and every constituent is moving in the right direction towards achievement of the goals for which the programme/activity was originally initiated.
It is, therefore, obvious that any programme/activity which runs without a system of effective evaluation and a band of trained functionaries for implementation, cannot in any way yield the expected results. In fact, the efforts taken in such cases will prove to be meaningless.
It is in this context, one has to think about the present status of our country's educational programmes and the functionaries involved in those, viz., the curriculum developers, the textbook writers, the teachers, the question setters and the examiners. There is a lack of coordination among the functionaries which ultimately raise questions about the validity of educational programmes. This emphasises the important role of evaluation, both at the formative stage when the programme is planned and is in the process of execution, and at the summative stage after the same has been implemented as per the plan. The National Policy of Education, 1986 has also given A lot of thrust on Evaluation of different programmes conducted on the name of Education.
Setting a stage for evaluation at every level of the educational process, is the duty of the curriculum developers and the textbook writers. The implementation part of the evaluation will have to be examiners. It is, therefore, quite obvious that everyone who is Involved in the educational process will have to have the knowledge of evaluation technologies and its terminologies Which are becoming more and more complex and technical in nature, as a result of inter-disciplinary research conducted in the area. It is because of this complexity of evaluation work that the CIIL has decided to bring out this volume for the benefit of several categories of evaluators.Mr. Pon Subbaiah who has prepared this volume entitled Evaluation and Testing : An Introduction to Terminology deserves our congratulations. I hope the users of this volume will find it useful.
A. K. SRIVASTAVA
Director-In-charge