Making the Case for the Humanities in Evaluation Training
Department
Leadership and Integrative Studies
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Fall 2011
Abstract
The author argues that evaluators who are comfortable with the interpretation of competing values—an ability that can be fostered by exposure to the humanities—might be able to contribute significant advances toward finding a better balance of methodologies in an ever-more-ambiguous world. This argument is made by describing a humanities-informed evaluation graduate course. Black-and-white worldviews and one-size-fits-all solutions are hard to reconcile in evaluation environments increasingly characterized by multiculturalism, complexity, and uncertainty. The author reflects on the place of value judgments in the graduate education of future evaluators, not as something to avoid, but as an opportunity to improve needed skills.