Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use Review
A book for academics, great source of references and great if you need to write an article on evaluation. The book is also a sad reflection on the profession of evaluation.
Having stuffed evaluation into two neatly labeled boxes, Formative and Summative evaluation, Patton outlines the need for thinking outside the box. He introduces many fine concepts including emergence and systems thinking but then proceeds to revert to creating a new box with rigid boundaries and labels this new box Developmental Evaluation.
Now we have three neat boxes to choose from and spend time musing over which is the appropriate box for a particular evaluation.
Very disappointing! Why do we need a Phd thesis to tell us that life is messy or the difference between simple, complicated and complex? Why is the author so surprised by everyday truths?
The concepts in the book while valid, remain disconnected and separated out and the author clearly needs neat simple solutions that are defined, confined and documented by academics.
What is really missing in the book is awareness, a true openness to discovery, a large splash of humility and a commitment to accountability. So much could be learned from Paulo Freire and his Praxis concept or from Jane Vella's great book "How do They know They know" yet neither get a mention.
The greatest asset with this book is that it gives the evaluator permission and the authority from academia to move from the twin cells of Formative and Summative Evaluation for brief excursions into the defined and confined exercise yard now claimed and named as Developmental Evaluation. So sad that we need this permission to move towards reality !Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use Overview
Developmental evaluation (DE) offers a powerful approach to monitoring and supporting social innovations by working in partnership with program decision makers. In this book, eminent authority Michael Quinn Patton shows how to conduct evaluations within a DE framework. Patton draws on insights about complex dynamic systems, uncertainty, nonlinearity, and emergence. He illustrates how DE can be used for a range of purposes: ongoing program development, adapting effective principles of practice to local contexts, generating innovations and taking them to scale, and facilitating rapid response in crisis situations. Students and practicing evaluators will appreciate the book's extensive case examples and stories, cartoons, clear writing style, "closer look" sidebars, and summary tables. Provided is essential guidance for making evaluations useful, practical, and credible in support of social change.

Want to learn more information about Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now