Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Own goals: evaluation and accountability in millennium development planning

Kushner, Saville

Own goals: evaluation and accountability in millennium development planning Thumbnail


Authors

Saville Kushner



Contributors

Katherine Ryan
Editor

J. Bradley Cousins
Editor

Abstract

I will argue that international organizations are caught in the middle of a paradox as they seek to implement international goals in local contexts. It is this: that events and phenomena like schools and educational ideas have what appear to be mutually exclusive properties - that they are both unique to context and comparable with other contexts; they have both a global and a local character. Schools, for example, are both compoarable across countries and cultures and unique to heir host communities. This is a paradox that afflicts UNICEF, as with other international agencies, as it struggles to resolve the tension between its global accountabilities and its roots in a local (in-country, often municipal) action-base with obligations to children, families and communities.

One of the implications of this paradox is that we have to think flexibly about what counts as a standard or as a goal, allowing them to be determined locally – to reflect the priorities and preferences of citizens and communities – and globally – to reflect international agreements and advances in internationally-recognised moralities. In respect of evaluation I will show how thinking simultaneously of democracy and rights in evaluation – in fact, as determinants of evaluation design – allows for the mediation of the global and the local, especially in respect of MDGs. Though rights and democracy are frequently thought of by rights theorists as being in tension, program evaluation allows for their unification. I will talk briefly about a right-based approach to e

Citation

Kushner, S. (2008). Own goals: evaluation and accountability in millennium development planning. In K. Ryan, & J. B. Cousins (Eds.), International Handbook of Educational Evaluation (413-428). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage

Publication Date Jan 1, 2008
Publicly Available Date Jun 8, 2019
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Pages 413-428
Book Title International Handbook of Educational Evaluation
ISBN 9781412940689
Keywords evaluation, international development, methodology
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1019884
Publisher URL http://www.sagepub.com/books/Book228412

Files

Own_Goals_Final_clean.doc (123 Kb)
Document






Downloadable Citations