69 - Positioning evaluator-as-learner: Evaluator and ethnographer co-teaching a program evaluation course from an ethnographic perspective

Abstract Information: In the Fall of 2022 and 2023, evaluator-ethnographers joined an evaluator-faculty member to co-teach a graduate-level Program Evaluation course. The faculty member initiated this collaborative endeavor because she recognized a need for graduate students to learn how to prepare for and engage in evaluative processes with a principled approach grounded in anthropological concepts of culture. This approach to evaluation is informed by an emerging framework (Green et al., 2003; Green et al., 2022) grounded in ethnographically guided principles (Heath & Street, 2008) developed from anthropology and ethnography of communication. This paper has two goals: 1) Present the ethnographically informed framework that was proposed to students called an axis-of-development in the context of a developing evaluation, and 2) Make visible the affordances of an ethnographic perspective as a support system for guiding student evaluators in taking informed actions in evaluative processes. In this paper, we unfold a conceptual framework, called an Axis of Development (AoD), for positioning oneself as ‘evaluator as learner’ in planning for and implementing an evaluation as well as post-hoc documenting and reporting of evaluative processes. These principles are represented in the AoD to characterize teaching-learning-developing relationships. As such, culture is defined as a conceptual system of meanings, and value holders are conceptualized as cultural groups. Given that this approach to teaching a Program Evaluation course has been used for two years with 35 graduate students, this paper also highlights the faculty-member’s perspective on the affordances that this innovative approach to engaging in evaluative processes brings to the evaluation field and learning environment.