On Dec 2, 2010, Jane gave a presentation for the anzea (Aotearoa New Zealand Evaluation Association) Auckland branch end-of-year event, which stimulated some interesting discussion.
It was a reflection on part of the theme for the 2010 American Evaluation Association conference – Evaluation Quality – with a focus on Ernie House’s (1980) concepts of truth, beaty and justice in evaluation (click the link to access PDFs of the key chapters in House’s book, from the AEA e-library).
Although House wrote that truth trumps beauty and justice trumps them all, Jane argued for the critical importance of ‘beauty’ (the coherent, persuasive, compelling story or argument) – with the ‘values’ and the reasoning that guide conclusions about quality and value made clearly visible, transparent and understandable – as a hugely important path to both truth and justice.
Enjoy the presentation (click to download the PDF)!
