Environmental Approach Used for Evaluating an Educational Innovation

An environmental assessment was used to compare an experimental high school that had incorporated Corsini's (1977) individual education program with a relatively conventional high school. Both schools belong to the same network of schools and are in urban settings. The Corsini program emphasizes responsibility, respect, resourcefulness, and responsiveness; students are responsible for their own studies and assume an active and egalitarian relationship with the teachers. The high-inference Classroom Environment Scale (CES) (Moos & Trickett, 1974) was administered to 13 teachers and classes in the experimental school and to 14 teachers and classes in the conventional school. The perceived classroom environments of both teachers and classes in the two schools differed according to the contrasting educational philosophies of the schools, for example, experimental classes showed more teacher support, involvement, and innovation, whereas conventional classes emphasized the environmental dimensions of task orientation, competition, and teacher control. The results of the study indicate the advantageous use of environmental instruments as a criterion variable in global assessments of the classroom.