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The need for a manifesto for educational programme evaluation

Elliott, John; Kushner, Saville

Authors

John Elliott

Saville Kushner



Abstract

This paper explores the progress of educational programme evaluation over three decades through the lens of a group of evaluators primarily from the UK and the US who met periodically from 1972 to 2004 to review the state of the art of educational programme evaluation - what it could and could not do - in relation to the complexity of programme initiatives and the policy and political contexts of the times. These meetings came to be known as the Cambridge conferences as they were always held at a university college in Cambridge. They were sponsored in the main by the Nuffield Foundation and, in 2004, by the ESRC. The nucleus of original group membership was retained over the years for continuity with additional members joining as the specific focus of the conference changed and new ideas were sought. There have been six conferences. This paper first locates the contextual origin of and reason for the first conference and the manifesto that was written from it. Secondly it documents the revisiting of that manifesto at the sixth conference leading to the construction of a 'new' manifesto that reflects changes required in evaluation methodology in the socio/political context of the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Citation

Elliott, J., & Kushner, S. (2007). The need for a manifesto for educational programme evaluation. Cambridge Journal of Education, 37(3), 321-336. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057640701546649

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Sep 1, 2007
Journal Cambridge Journal of Education
Print ISSN 0305-764X
Electronic ISSN 1469-3577
Publisher Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 37
Issue 3
Pages 321-336
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/03057640701546649
Keywords educational programme evaluation, education
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1025115
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057640701546649
Additional Information Additional Information : The paper reviews the deliberations of the Sixth Cambridge Evaluation Conference (2004) for which Kushner was the Co-Convenor. The Cambridge Conferences - 4-5 day international invited seminars - commenced in 1972 and are widely cited as a source of methodological development in the field of programme and policy evaluation. The first such conference published a 'Manifesto for Educational Evaluation'. This last conference reassembled some original conferees with other leading evaluation theorists to review evaluation experience and changing political contexts in the intervening 30 years. The need for a restatement of principle and a repositioning of educational evaluation was resolved, and the conference (including extended post-conference communications) agreed a new Manifesto which was disseminated and verified at evaluation and educational research conferences internationally. Its rigour and originality derive from its source in the collective deliberations of a international group of prominent theorists. Kushner is responsible for 50% of this publication.


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