Kia ora tatou,
Some interesting responses to my original post, and some interesting confusions !
A few additional remarks and a request.
I was careful to make a distinction between "evaluation" (verb) and Evaluation (proper noun). I'm not normally so grammatically pedantic, but I wanted to differentiate between the activity of evaluation (which we all do in our personal and professional lives with varying degrees of validity and rigour), and this somewhat self-titled field of inquiry called Evaluation. I'm also aware that as soon as you talk about Evaluation to someone based in the States you just have to accept that they are filtering whatever you say through images of K12 assessments, and student evaluations of university courses !
Let's for a moment put take these constraints as read and focus on what CHAT and Evaluation (proper noun) have to offer each other as fields of inquiry for program or organisational development.
It seems to me that Evaluation can offer CHAT lessons from its pragmatic approach to issues verging at times on the brutal. The methodologies, methods and techniques the field has developed over the past 20 years, whatever their many faults, have managed to square quite a few circles in term of resource, organisational, technical and ideological constraints. In response to Mike's comment, the debates about so called "Internal Evaluations" have been long and deep. There is a vast amount of experience here and ways of resolving the apparent contradictions have been well documented. There are other potential methodological, method and technique offerings, but I want to keep this post brief.
The great weakness of Evaluation is that it has never comprehensively got its collective head around three critical areas. One is systemic or systems based approaches to inquiry. Another is just how programs and organisations grow and change. And finally, despite acres of excellent writing and thought around promoting the "use" of Evaluation findings, it has never really considered deeply about how people learn; and the context of that learning. True, Evaluation has nibbled, with varying degrees of success at each of these three areas, but has never really brought the three together with any degree of success. It is here that I believe CHAT has much to offer in terms of methodologies or methods and maybe even techniques.
However, to get these synergies, we need to find areas of common ground, or means of resolving some of the apparent contradictions that flow from the two fields' histories and activities. I've generated enough interest in the Evaluation field about CHAT to be asked to contribute a section in a forthcoming high profile book. I've also been asked to begin to think of ways in which to educate people more in the theory and practice of CHAT by senior figures in some of the fields' international societies. It's a toe hold.
Two toe holds are better than one. They leave the hands and mind free to do some other things other than hang on. So the purpose of my original post to xmca was to see if I can find a toe hold in the CHAT discourse about Evaluation.
As you can guess, I believe both fields have much to offer each other, but in order to do so we need to find somewhere to start. We need some means of talking across the fence. I thought that one way of doing this was to seek out others who occupy the ground covered by both CHAT and Evaluation. Some people who might also be interested in helping develop not only ways of talking, but perhaps some tools that draw from and are useful to both communities of practice.
Any takers ?
Cheers
Bob
-- BOB WILLIAMS Mobile (64) 21 254 8983 Check out the free resources on my WEB site http://users.actrix.co.nz/bobwillSocial change happens when a small group of people hold fast to an idea despite overwhelming odds. It doesn't always work, but staying at home never does. Jon Carrol "San Francisco Chronicle"
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