Abstract
Diagnostic assumptions are stated as stakeholders’ expectations or beliefs of the major and minor causes of core problems. Since the intervention to address a problem is based on the causes of that problem, diagnostic assumptions are crucial to a normative theory and need to be examined from design, implementation, and evaluation perspectives. This chapter appraises the use of the policy scientific approach in explicating diagnostic assumptions. An Alternative Causes Approach is proposed.
We believe it is fundamentally important for us to examine the assumptions underlying our ways of doing things and our attitudes toward educational objectives and processes. Some of these attitudes were acquired by mere gregarious assent. Now that we have better means of checking up on our assumptions, we should proceed to overhaul the whole question of organizing, managing, and teaching our public schools. This is a big job—too big to be undertaken all at once. Under these circumstances the most important things should be done first. We suggest that they are not the minutiae but the broad basic facts underlying the larger aspects of education. In short, the time has come when we may properly examine the assumptions which we have considered sufficient and see whether, with the existing means of measurement and analysis, these assumptions maintain their validity
Educational Research Bulletin, editorial; 1923, p. 276
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Nkwake, A.M. (2013). Diagnostic Assumptions. In: Working with Assumptions in International Development Program Evaluation. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4797-9_8
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