The notions of indigenous knowledge and cultural philosophies are becoming ubiquitous in many social inquiries, and evaluation is no exception. Nonetheless, the pursuit to embed relevant indigenous philosophies in contemporary evaluation has yet to succeed. In this article, we discuss indigenous relational philosophies, approaches, and practices…

Evaluation capacity building (ECB) is an essential element for generating credible and actionable evidence on Extension programs. This paper offers a discussion of ECB efforts in Cooperative Extension and how such efforts enable Extension professionals to collect and use credible and actionable evidence on the quality and impacts of programs.…

Integrating evaluation into an Extension program offers multiple opportunities to understand program success through achieving program goals and objectives, delivering programming using the most effective techniques, and refining program audiences. It is less common that evaluation is used to guide and validate the effectiveness of program…

From a utilization-focused evaluation perspective, the success of an evaluation is rooted in the extent to which the evaluation was used by stakeholders. This paper details the "Expectations to Change" (E2C) process, an interactive, workshop-based method designed to engage primary users with their evaluation findings as a means of…

Developmental evaluation (DE), essentially conceptualized by Patton over the past 30 years, is a promising evaluative approach intended to support social innovation and the deployment of complex interventions. Its use is often justified by the complex nature of the interventions being evaluated and the need to produce useful results in real time.…

From the 1980s to the present, educational accountability in the United States has grown dramatically. Such accountability in U.S. school districts, although driven primarily by external demands, has internal manifestations as well. The chapter traces the historical development of internal evaluation in American school districts, then highlights…

This paper describes the development of a model for integrating student evaluation of teaching results with academic development opportunities, in new ways that take into account theoretical and practical developments in both fields. The model is described in terms of five phases or components: (1) the basic student evaluation system; (2) an…

Illustrates steps in the evaluation process, reports findings from the evaluation, demonstrates the importance of planning evaluations before programs are implemented, and encourages the use of evaluation techniques in program development. (JOW)

The traditional view that an activity's comparative impact on collective welfare ought to guide resource allocation is refuted. A paradigm of a multisystem society with the non-fungibility of investment resources an essential issue in project appraisal is presented. (SLD)

Ten functions of program theory are reviewed: contributing to social science knowledge; assisting policymakers, discriminating between theory failure and program failure, identifying the problem and target group, providing program implementation description, uncovering unintended effects, specifying intervening variables, improving formative use…

Developmental evaluation is proposed as a term to describe certain long-term partnering relationships with clients who are, themselves, engaged in ongoing program development. Rather than a model, developmental evaluation is a relationship founded on a shared purpose and is a way of being useful in innovative settings. (SLD)

Two articles present differing points of view on the evaluation of the development of a teacher education program. "Through the Looking Glass..." describes what happens when an evaluator becomes the evaluation client, and "Degrees of Strangeness" reports on the evaluator's findings and opinions. (SLD)

The author presents a proposal that is roughly based on a contingency-based theory of evaluation developed in his book, "Evaluation: An Integrated Framework for Understanding, Guiding, and Improving Policies and Programs" (Mark, Henry, and Julnes, 2000). He and his coauthors stated in this book that social betterment was the ultimate goal of…

Evaluability assessment is a diagnostic and prescriptive technique that can be used to determine the extent to which different problems inhibit program evaluation. It involves policymakers, managers, and staff in developing program theory, clarifying intended uses of evaluation information, and planning further evaluations that would stimulate…

The evaluation of second language programs is an educational task with profound potential for improving pedagogical practice. Evaluators who educate perform more than just a "service" function by helping people to learn, develop themselves, and refine their abilities to work more effectively. (CB)