Evaluative Research Methods (eBook)

Saville Kushner (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2016 | 1. Auflage
299 Seiten
Information Age Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-68123-690-2 (ISBN)

Infos

This book is written for research students and their supervisors, for ‘program evaluators’, and for those researchers who don’t call themselves evaluators, but whose research is evaluative. It is aimed, this is to say, at those whose research involves judgment - of policies, practices or organization. judgment of their value, merit or their appropriateness. The involvement of judgment changes the nature of any research and makes particular demands on the researcher in terms of choice and use of method, ethics, political relationships and even emotional capabilities. There are many methodological text-books and models to support the researcher to meet such challenges. This is not one of those. Rather than teach a methodology or propose a model, this book helps you to think methodologically - i.e. to solve methodological, political, emotional issues as they arise, using your own judgment and your own resources. There are no blueprints for dealing with the ethics and the politics of evaluative research, there is only your ability to manage complexity and unpredictability. This book supports you in developing just that. Since this is an intellectual challenge the book offers both theory and method combined, and is laced with practical examples.

Here at last is a thoughtful and important effort to enlarge the theoretical and practical evaluative framework that includes consideration of the political environment. Part history, part memoir, part technical guide, and part passionate advocacy, Saville Kushner has written a book that moves our field forward. Eleanor Chelimsky

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How do research students and their supervisors respond in a world of 'fake news', the destabilisation of public institutions and the rise of populism? The very foundations of our liberal democracies seem to be under threat, and this implicates social inquiry. Postgraduate research remains one of the few information spaces which are still free of politicisation and committed to validation.This book focuses on democracy in inquiry, and on the role of inquiry in a democracy - how research helps us to deliberate over what counts as of public value. It is a research methods book, but methods shaped by political and ethical purposes, and by the challenge of making judgements about what, in the public sphere, is worthy. We may be looking at a police training program, the siting of a clean energy project, a new school curriculum, maternal health program or an environmental adaptation project - in each case and in others like them we have to negotiate perspectives and claims, forge and justify a consensus, support competing stakeholders with the best information and analyses possible.And we have to make our work defensible - undeniable in the forum of public debate and exchange, examination and accountability. This book, full of examples from contemporary research projects, is designed to help navigate our way through the complexities of social research which focuses on judgements about public action.The book was written with research students and includes examples of their work. It recognises that supervisors often struggle as much as students in meeting the challenges of inquiry that involves some element of evaluative judgement - inquiry that potentially carries consequences. Where there are no quick-and-ready recipes, check-lists or theoretical frameworks - where we confront the particularities of the context in which the research takes place, we are all forced back onto good methodological thinking, and this is the pedagogical framing of the book.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.12.2016
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Schulbuch / Wörterbuch ► Lexikon / Chroniken
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Bildungstheorie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• ISBN-10: 1-68123-690-7 / 1681236907
• ISBN-13: 978-1-68123-690-2 / 9781681236902