Description
Book SynopsisElgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary.
This unique Research Agenda addresses salient current issues in evaluation research, offering a broad perspective on the role of evaluation in society.
International expert contributors explore how evaluation research is not only academic research engaged in practical problem-solving, but is also research that takes a critical look at this engagement, providing inspiration for reflexivity among evaluators. Drawing on a range of perspectives, including sociology, organization theory, psychoanalytic theory, and feminism, chapters analyse examples of how evaluation works in a number of arenas, such as education, research, and voluntary work.
Taking a critical look at evaluation as a social phenomenon, this Research Agenda will be a useful resource for scholars and students of evaluation, public administration and management, and public policy. It will also be beneficial in helping practitioners and researchers to understand the major emerging issues within the field of evaluation.
Trade Review‘Editor Peter Dahler-Larsen has assembled a worthy multi-faceted volume, A Research Agenda for Evaluation,
conveyed through the varied lenses of an exceptional international group of evaluation scholars. These lenses feature philosophical, socio-political, and cultural facets of evaluation. Among the key concepts and values included are the importance of cultural wisdom, overcoming the ‘‘bureaucratic capture of evaluation‘‘ and the persistent practice of ‘‘governing by numbers,‘‘ the contributions of ‘‘collaborative‘‘ and ‘‘feminist‘‘ evaluation traditions, and replacing evaluative ‘‘tools of control‘‘ with ‘‘tools of emancipation.‘‘‘ -- Jennifer C. Greene, Professor Emerita, University of Illinois, US
Table of ContentsContents: 1 Introduction to A Research Agenda for Evaluation: inspirational themes 1 Peter Dahler-Larsen 2 We do not start anything until everybody is there: an interview with Fileberto Reynaldo Lopez 15 Peter Dahler-Larsen 3 The thickening modern: developing a research agenda beyond intensifying rationalism 21 Jaakko Kauko and Mika K. T. Pajunen 4 What if less were more? Exploring new pathways for the institutionalization of evaluation in international organizations 43 Estelle Raimondo 5 Fabricating “non-knowledge”: international organizations and the numerical construction of an evaluative world 63 Sotiria Grek 6 Beyond programs: toward a fuller picture of beneficiaries in nonprofit evaluation 81 Lehn M. Benjamin 7 Evaluation people and real people in home–school cooperation 105 Maria Ørskov Akselvoll and Peter Dahler-Larsen 8 Mapping the ecology of knowledge in collaborative practice: a look toward future possibilities 129 Jill Anne Chouinard 9 Is feminist policy evaluation possible? Methodological and theoretical considerations 147 Emily St. Denny 10 Designing indicators for opening up evaluation: insights from research assessment 165 Ismael Ràfols and Andy Stirling 11 Victims or accomplices? Our strange appetite for evaluation 195 Bénédicte Vidaillet 12 Rhetorical power in evaluations: tracing the construction of value-measurement links in debates on societal impact 209 Felicitas Hesselmann and Cornelia Schendzielorz 13 The future of evaluation: notes for the engaged evaluation researcher 225 Peter Dahler-Larsen Index 233
