Evaluation for equity: reclaiming evaluation by striving towards counter-hegemonic democratic practices

ABSTRACT

Formal evaluation of policies, programmes and people has become ubiquitous in contemporary western contexts. This is the case for equity and widening participation (WP) agendas in higher education, for which evaluation is often required to measure ‘what works’. Although evaluation has a ‘fundamentally social, political, and value-oriented character’ (Guba and Lincoln. 1989. Fourth Generation Evaluation. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 7), an experimental approach, situated within hegemonic positivist epistemologies, has tended to prevail. In this paper, we argue that it is misguided to pursue evaluation with an apolitical pretext of independence and objectivity. Drawing on Butler’s concept of performativity, we explore how hegemonic anti-democratic evaluation practices can potentially re-inscribe and reproduce the very inequalities that WP seeks to address. By critiquing the technologies of evaluation, we lay out one way of understanding how democratic evaluation practices can reclaim evaluation to make possible more diverse and socially just worlds.

KEYWORDS:

• Evaluation
• equity
• widening participation
• social justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rhyall Barry Gordon

Dr Rhyall Barry Gordon works in the role of Praxis Officer for the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle. His role involves developing initiatives to support the exchange between theory and practice in the context of equity projects both within the University of Newcastle and in the wider community. Rhyall has a PhD in community economic development and over 20 years of experience more broadly in community development. He has carried out community based research projects in the area of homelessness, affordable housing, food security, refugee policy and the youth sector.

Matt Lumb

Dr Matt Lumb is Associate Director at the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia. A sociologist of higher education, his PhD explored some of the unintended consequences of university equity and widening participation outreach into school communities. His ongoing research interests include education policy, evaluation approaches and practices, and understanding the relationships between social inequalities and contemporary higher education.

Matthew Bunn

Dr Matthew Bunn is a Research Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE) at the University of Newcastle, Australia. His work is centred on understanding entrenched inequalities within Higher Education. His areas of interest include problems of individualisation, the theorisation of social and individual agency and the durability of social class. Dr Bunn also works on building stronger communication between research and practice, including through CEEHE's National Writing Program for Equity Practitioners, mentoring equity practitioners to support their writing to communicate back into institutional and academic spaces.

Penny Jane Burke

Penny Jane Burke is Global Innovation Chair of Equity and Director of the Centre of Excellence in Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Passionately dedicated to developing methodological, theoretical and pedagogical frameworks that enable critical and feminist praxis, generating time-space for the reframing of equity in HE, her books include Accessing Education Effectively Widening Participation (Burke, 2002, Trentham Books), Reconceptualising Lifelong Learning: Feminist Interventions (Burke and Jackson, 2007, Routledge), The Right to Higher Education: Beyond widening participation (Burke, 2012, Routledge) and Changing Pedagogical Spaces in Higher Education (Burke, Crozier and Misiaszek, 2016, Routledge). Penny is co-Editor of the Bloomsbury Gender and Education book series, Global Chair of Social Innovation at University of Bath, honorary professor at University of Exeter and has held the posts of Professor at the University of Roehampton, the University of Sussex and Reader at the Institute of Education, University of London. She is an expert member of the Australian government's Equity in Higher Education Panel.