Short Abstract

This workshop will explore different approaches to surfacing the epistemic roots shaping evaluations and participant reflections on their own experiences of working to mobilise alternative perspectives in their evaluation practice.

Description

Our idea for this workshop emerged from shared experiences. Too often, the parameters for evaluations are set at the outset, leaving little scope to step back and question fundamental assumptions baked into intervention design and the kinds of questions evaluators are tasked to answer.

In our own evaluation research, we have been exploring how to disrupt the dominant ontological and epistemic perspectives that constrain efforts to understand complex health, social, and environmental issues, and ultimately stymie social intervention and change. In collaboration with community and local government partners, we have experimented with embedding alternative approaches (e.g., critical theory, decolonising approaches, new materialist perspectives) into the evaluation of UK social, health, and environmental interventions. This has enabled exploration of evaluation as a tool to disrupt rather than reinforce contemporary social relations and the inequalities in power, money, and resources that sustain complex social problems.

We will use the “1–2–4-All method” to structure the workshop and encourage people to share their learning and reflections on the workshop theme in gradually larger groups. The provocation at the start of the workshop will be based on a short presentation of a booklet of visual metaphors designed to illustrate the importance of interrogating the epistemic roots of research and evaluation (https://zenodo.org/records/15766578). We will pose a question to the group about what the booklet brings up for them when reflecting on their evaluation experiences and practices. Participants will first have some time for personal silent reflections on the question (the “1”). They will then come together in pairs to share their thinking and ideas (the “2”) before joining with another pair to further the discussion (the “4”). We will then bring the the full group together to share their key takeaways from the discussion.

Hard copies of the booklet will be available to all participants, along with supplementary resources that can further aid in achieving the workshop objectives. We will also provide a range of materials for participants to write down and sketch out their thinking and the metaphors that they use in their own work to open up conversations around complex questions on ontology, epistemology, and changing how we attend to and see the world.