|
Session Title: The Influence of Evaluators' Principles and Clients' Values on Contextually-Bound Evaluation Resource Decisions
|
|
Panel Session 125 to be held in Suwannee 16 on Wednesday, Nov 11, 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM
|
|
Sponsored by the Research on Evaluation TIG
|
| Chair(s): |
| Jennifer Greene, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, jcgreene@uiuc.edu
|
| Discussant(s):
|
| A Rae Clementz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, clementz@illinois.edu
|
| Abstract:
As evaluators, we hold certain principles (enacted values) that guide our practice, as do the clients we serve. This panel will discuss how those principles influence our work, especially in the decisions we must make given resources available to a particular context. The extent to which certain principles and resources are negotiable or non-negotiable across evaluation or evaluation capacity building settings will also be explored. Particular attention will be paid to the enacted values guiding the relationships between the evaluator and the client, who are key resources in determining the direction of the evaluative effort and ensuring its successful implementation and utility.
|
|
Theoretical Implications for Research on Evaluation
|
| Marvin Alkin, University of California Los Angeles, alkin@gseis.ucla.edu
|
|
Alkin will present a synopsis of key theoretical approaches relevant to the panel's discussion and discuss the implications of research on evaluator's principles and clients' values for the field of evaluation.
|
|
|
Influence of Evaluators' Principles on Resource Decisions Within and Across Contexts
|
| Kara Crohn, University of California Los Angeles, kara.crohn@ucla.edu
|
|
Crohn will present dissertation research findings from three intensive qualitative case studies of work by Jennifer Greene, Gary Henry and Jean King which highlight ways in which evaluators' principles influence resource decisions. This study expands on "Theorists' Models in Action," New Directions for Evaluation, no. 106 (Alkin & Christie, Eds.). For each participant, relationships among resources and the evaluator's principles were first examined in the case used for "Theorists' Models in Action" and compared with analyses of real evaluations that best exemplified the evaluator's theory in practice. Examples of key relationships and their implications for practice will be described with particular emphasis on principles concerning contextuality, the ways in which resource-principle relationships are enacted in a given context, and similarities and differences across contexts.
| |
|
Reflections on the Principles That Guide My Work and the Contextuality of Evaluation Resource Decisions
|
| Jean A King, University of Minnesota, kingx004@umn.edu
|
|
As a participant in Crohn's research, King will offer her perspective on the findings presented. She will reflect on the extent to which various factors influence her work, including her principles, her relationships with others on the evaluation team and in the evaluation setting, limitations and opportunities presented in the context, etc.
| |