Offering an excellent, client-oriented, results-driven means for studying practice evaluation, this book brings together practice, research, structural change in service delivery, and specific skills in an integrated, problem-solving way. With managed care becoming such a hot topic, professionals need to track client assessments and demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of their treatment. PRACTICE EVALUATION IN THE 21st CENTURY helps students develop the skills to monitor efficacy by integrating practice and research in the text, as well as providing access to powerful evaluation software via the Web. The book effectively conveys to students the importance of empirically evaluating social work practice and the responsibility of all practitioners to engage in evaluation as an integrated part of professional practice. Students have access to the CASS software on the accompanying Web site and will find that the contextual support in the text along with easy-to-follow documentation make the software easy to use.

Signs of Change: Assessment Past, Present and Future Another Time, Another Place...Examinations Then and Now In the Temple of Literature in Hanoi, Vietnam, a series of stone stelae records the names of the handful of illustrious examination candidates who, in each century, passed the national examination to become a Doctor of Literature. Beginning in the 11thcentury,theexamswereconductedpersonallybysuccessivekingswhopursued Confucian ideals that found expression in the enormous value placed on the pursuit of wisdom and learning. In the 21st century we are both puzzled and impressed by this tradition. Puzzled by such an explicit commitment to a meritocracy in an essentially feudal society; impressed by this enthusiasm for learning and the pursuit of wisdom at the highest level of society. Yet, there are also important similarities between the 11th and 21st centuries. Then, as now, assessment was associated with excellence, high standards, pr- tige and competition—success for the chosen few; disappointment for the majority. Then, as now, the pursuit of excellence was embedded in a social context that favoured the elite and determined success in terms of the predilections of the p- erful. Then, as now, the purpose of the assessment, the way it was conducted and its impact on society all re ected the social and economic priorities of the day.

Evaluation for the 21st Century features thoughtfully written introductions to each of the main sections that provide a context and synthesis of the various evaluators' chapters. After reading this groundbreaking book, researchers and practitioners will be able to recognize these new developments in evaluation as they encounter them, place them in context, and incorporate them into their own evaluation professions and practices.

What methodological tools have been most useful in doing evaluation? What are some of the new methodologies that are being used and developed? Will the types of things evaluated expand from programs, personnel, and products to foreign aid, medical technology, environmental interventions, and World Bank loan programs? What will evaluation be like in the 21st century? These impressive evaluators from around the globe explore how evaluation has come to be what it is today and what the professional evaluation landscape will be like in the future. They examine the following: -What makes evaluation different from other disciplines? -The links and differences between evaluation and auditing professions? -Which activities have priority in evaluation, under what circumstances, and for what purposes? -New methodological approaches to doing evaluation. -The issues of advocacy versus truth in evaluation and between evaluating programs versus empowering people to evaluate their own programs. Evaluation for the 21st Century features thoughtfully written introductions to each of the main sections that provide a context and synthesis of the various evaluators′ chapters. After reading this groundbreaking book, researchers and practitioners will be able to recognize these new developments in evaluation as they encounter them, place them in context, and incorporate them into their own evaluation professions and practices. A stunning achievement, Evaluation for the 21st Century is for all professionals and practitioners in evaluation, management, public administration, sociology, psychology, education research, public health, and nursing.

This second volume of papers from the ATC21STM project deals with the development of an assessment and teaching system of 21st century skills. Readers are guided through a detailed description of the methods used in this process. The first volume was published by Springer in 2012 (Griffin, P., McGaw, B. & Care, E., Eds., Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills, Dordrecht: Springer). The major elements of this new volume are the identification and description of two 21st century skills that are amenable to teaching and learning: collaborative problem solving, and learning in digital networks. Features of the skills that need to be mirrored in their assessment are identified so that they can be reflected in assessment tasks. The tasks are formulated so that reporting of student performance can guide implementation in the classroom for use in teaching and learning. How simple tasks can act as platforms for development of 21st century skills is demonstrated, with the concurrent technical infrastructure required for its support. How countries with different languages and cultures participated and contributed to the development process is described. The psychometric qualities of the online tasks developed are reported, in the context of the robustness of the automated scoring processes. Finally, technical and educational issues to be resolved in global projects of this nature are outlined.

Nowadays, a considerable amount of evaluation work is implemented internally—both nationally and across the world. As such, it is exceedingly important for evaluators and organizations to be aware of the issues in designing and implementing internal evaluation to realize its potential for enhancing organizational growth, competitive advantage, and social impact. This issue includes perspectives on internal evaluation from experienced evaluation practitioners from different fields and organizations who share theoretical and practical examples and case studies in promoting and conducting internal evaluation. The chapters: Highlight societal and organizational changes that have shaped the current trends in internal evaluation Discuss foundational issues in internal evaluation Provide rich illustrations of internal evaluation practice in different settings with diverse foci (customer-driven vision and a results-based orientation for evaluation, accountability and development, and building evaluation capacity). This is the 132nd volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Evaluation, an official publication of the American Evaluation Association.

This is is a core text for courses across mental health service disciplines, including counselling, social work, psychology, public health, and nursing. It was developed by the author for her course in counseling services and administration as a response to her frustration for a comprehensive book that takes students through all the necessary components involved in developing a mental health community program (such as reducing teen pregnancy, increasing access for minorities, health promotion and prevention). This book is unique in its coverage of all the main areas required to plan and implement a community program, but it goes a step further by including important information on sustaining the program, budgeting, funding, community resource development, and fully implementing the program. In addition, the author has developed a number of tools that aid the student in developing a community program (usually a required class project) including exercises to help with needs assessment and planning, as well as exercises and quizzes, which will be included in a cd with the book. The book presents the author's 13-step model that guides a student through the entire process of planning and developing a mental health community program.