The purpose of this study was to produce a set of metaevaluation standards for the elementary school evaluation in Taiwan. The metaevaluation standards would be used as criteria for judging and improving school evaluation quality and as guidelines for planing and implementing school evaluation.
In order to developing the metaevaluation standards, this study expected firstly to explore: (1) the status quo of elemetary school evaluation in Taiwan; (2) the evolution, definition and focus of metaevaluation; (3) the function and components of metaevaluation standards; and (4) group decision-making methods for developing metaevaluation standards.
Secondly, the Delphi technique was employed to collect various views and aggregate consensus from a panel of 13 experts, consisting of educational scholars, educational administrators, elemetary school principals, and leaders of non-official education and business management institutes. An initial inventory of metaevaluation standards was compiled from the above literature review and panel discussion. A three-round delphi was conducted to rate the importance of the metaevaluation standards, and all participants completed and returned their questionnaires in each round.
On the basis of the aforementioned procedure, a set of 77 metaevaluation standards was produced, and distributed into six phases: planning evaluation, designing evaluation, implementing evluation, analyzing data, reporting, and using result.
The proposed suggestions of this study as follows:
1. For applying the metaevaluation standards to elemetary school evaluation, four suggestions were made: (1) to adjust the structure of the metaevaluation standards; (2) to select and use the appropriate metaevaluation standards relevant to the phases of school evaluation; (3) to use the metaevaluation standards as criteria for summative and formative metaevaluations; and (4) to use the metaevaluation standards as guidelines for planning and implementing school evaluation.
2. For all levels of school evaluation, two suggestions were made: (1) to schedule metaevaluation as a necessary step to any school evaluation program, and use metaevaluation standards to improve the quality of school evaluation; and (2) to establish ''The Joint Committee for Standards of School Evaluations'' for developing metaeviuation standards concerning to all school evaluations.
3. For other kinds of educational evaluation, two suggestions were made:
(1) to develop metaevaluation standards for curriculum evaluation: and
(2) to develop metaevaluation standards for teacher evaluation.
4. For the future studies, five suggestions were made: (1) to enlarge the samples from which to aggregate higher concensus; and (2) to verify the appropriateness of the metaevaluation standards through nationwide field test: (3) to plan and design program for implementing metaevaluation: and (5) to integrate evaluational theories for school evaluation.