| Abstract:
Although often portrayed as primarily a logic for investigating and demonstrating the value of programs, policies, and practices, evaluation is better grasped as a situated argument about value. Argument here refers to the idea of building a case in ordinary language for considering the particular merit, worth, or significance of something using both evidence and sound reasoning. Saying that an argument is always situated signifies that the argument is always contextualized in two senses: First, the context determines, in part, what constitutes reasonable data, criteria, and evidence for an evaluative claim. The value of a program, policy, or practice is always studied and framed within a particular context of debate, conflict of opinion, value preferences, climate of criticism, and the relative merits of those opinions, values, preferences, and so on. Second, evaluation arguments are always indexed to some particular context of contentious ideas held by clients and stakeholders, and it is in this context that an evaluator aims to make a persuasive case for his or her claims. In this expert lecture, Peter Dahler-Larsen from Denmark and Thomas Schwandt from the U.S. engage in a conversation about this idea of evaluation as situated argument. They explore how the role of the modern welfare state, socio-political cultures of accountability, civil society traditions of democratic deliberation and citizen responsibilities, and the like help situate the kinds of evaluative arguments that are considered legitimate in Denmark and the U.S.
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