A Research Agenda for Evaluation

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

Edited by Peter Dahler-Larsen, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Contents: 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 homeschool cooperation 105 Maria rskov 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 R fols and Andy Stirling 11 Victims or accomplices? Our strange appetite for evaluation 195 Bndicte 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