(Meta)Evaluation:
Coworking, Practice Groups, Project Consulting & Coaching
This work is for practicing evaluators who share a desire to transform evaluation towards practices that disrupt rather than maintain the status quo. Metaevaluation is the practice of evaluating an evaluation. In our 2024 Core Concepts in Evaluation chapter, Dr. Tiffany Tovey and I laid out the case for writing a new story about what metaevaluation can be. The old story, largely defined by the white, male standard bearers of the field, calls for an overly technocratic, impractical, retrospective process that serves the needs of funders and largely inspires anxiety and apathy towards the entire practice. It’s an outdated view on what should be a lively, ongoing reflective practice.
In that chapter, we issued a call to action - “Evaluators themselves must take up the charge and practice metaevaluation with intention.” We envisioned a new story for metaevaluation, one that encompasses many practices and is met with humility and compassion. An ongoing and iterative practice that individuals and teams can engage in through principled reflection.
“Our aim is for the new story of metaevaluation to start to interrogate this systemic and historical past through the lens of continuous improvement, wiser practice, and contribution to a more just society. In a sense, we aim to liberate metaevaluation and break it free from these socialized structures (Harro, 2000).”
~ Tovey & Smith, 2024
A New Story for (Meta)Evaluation
Read the paper and hear our Call to Action!
In early 2022, a team of editors put out a call for proposals for a book to be entitled Core Concepts in Evaluation. Each chapter was intended to be a modern commentary on “classic” writings in evaluation. We were drawn to respond to Stufflebeam’s original manuscript on Metaevaluation for a section called “Evaluation is a reflexive practice: evaluation can and should be evaluated.” Over the course of the next year, Tiffany and I met regularly to discuss and write this piece on metaevaluation as a reflective practice. A similar version was published by Sage in 2024.
We share this version here because we believe academic literature should be free and accessible. We believe the field of evaluation is in critical need of a revolution. This might feel like an uncomfortable truth, but -- evaluation is political. The current political paradigm in the US would have us believe that politics can only be described in binary terms (left/right). Instead, we offer a politic grounded in love and collective liberation. A politic that seeks to restore and repair connection to ourselves, to each other, to community, to nature. A politic that restores dignity and belonging. A politic that is grounded in our interdependence. A politic that includes everyone and leaves nobody out. Instead of the current divisive and harmful binary, we invite a paradigm shift into a cycle of liberation (Harro, 2000).