Articles - Blue Marble Evaluation

Praxis Makes Perfect? Transcending Textbooks to Learning Evaluation Experientially and in Cultural Contexts

This article provides aspiring Blue Marble Evaluators with an alternative framework for thinking about professional development outside of “formal” and “scholarly” learning spaces. Particularly relevant in the context of the anthropocene, the article offers experiential learning in the field and within cultural contexts as a much-needed professional design component for developing responsive, effective, and transformative … Read more

How does the commissioning process hinder the uptake of complexity-appropriate evaluation?

Leave a Comment / Articles / By admin / April 13, 2021 / Commissioning Evaluation, Complexity., Global Networks

This paper investigates the role of evaluation commissioning in hindering the take-up of complexity-appropriate evaluation methods, using findings from interviews with 19 UK evaluation commissioners and contractors. We find, against a backdrop of a need to ‘do more with less’ and frustration with some traditional approaches, the commissioning process is perceived to hinder adoption of … Read more

A Social Equity Assessment Tool (SEAT) for Evaluation

Leave a Comment / Articles, Tools / By admin / March 11, 2021 / assessment, criteria, equity, social justice, tool

The paper discusses the lack of a methodological tool for equity assessment in the evaluation field. It highlights the historical neglect of equity and social justice in some of the most widely and globally utilized evaluation criteria, including the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Evaluation Criteria, and its implications for the evaluation field’s equity assessment … Read more

Relational Systems Thinking: That’s How Change Is Going to Come, from Our Earth Mother

Leave a Comment / Articles / By admin / March 11, 2021 / Biodiversity, Decolonization & Indigenous Sovereignty, decolonizing, healing, mother earth, ndigenous Knowledges, Systems Thinking

This article explores the notion of the need to decolonize systems thinking and awareness. Taking a specifically Indigenous approach to both knowledge creation and knowledge sharing, the authors look at awareness based systems change via a Haudenosaunee (Mohawk) two row visual code. The authors explore the sacred space between Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of thinking … Read more

Evaluation Criteria for Evaluating Transformation: Implications for the Coronavirus Pandemic and the Global Climate Emergency

Leave a Comment / Articles / By Michael_Patton / March 11, 2021 / Climate, Equality & Justice, Evaluation Criteria, Global Networks, Human Rights, Sustainability, Transformation

Fundamental systems transformations are needed to address the global emergency brought on by climate change and related global trends, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which, together, pose existential threats to the future of humanity. Transformation has become the clarion call on the global stage. Evaluating transformation requires criteria. The revised Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Development … Read more

Book Review: Blue Marble Premises and Principles

Leave a Comment / Articles / By admin / April 29, 2020

By Robert Picciotto, University of Auckland, New Zealand American Journal of Evaluation, 2020 Summary: Michael Quinn Patton’s Blue Marble Evaluation is a forward-looking, path-breaking, and timely contribution to evaluation theory and practice. The title of the book evokes the Blue Marble shot—a photograph of the whole earth taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972. The preface of … Read more

Rethinking systems thinking: from a perspective of Chinese philosophy and sustainable development

Leave a Comment / Articles / By admin / January 25, 2020 / Chinese Philosophy, Systems Thinking

By Xu guangqing (2005) Abstract: As we know, the approach of systems thinking is fundamentally different from that of traditional forms of analysis. Traditional analysis focuses on the separating the individual pieces of what is being studied. Systems thinking, contrast, focuses on how the thing being studied interacts with other constituents of the system. Chinese … Read more

How far dare an evaluator go toward saving the world?

Leave a Comment / Articles / By admin / October 25, 2019 / Principle 12: Skin-in-the-game

By Bob Stake American Journal of Evaluation – Volume: 25 issue: 1, page(s): 103-107 – Sage (2004) In this article, Bob Stake explores the idea of skin in the game and asserts that no two evaluators would likely produce the exact same evaluation design and report. He then suggests a new standard for the field … Read more

Slave labor in the amazon has been linked to suppliers of Lowe’s and Walmart

Leave a Comment / Articles / By admin / October 25, 2019 / Human Rights, Principle 4: Integration, Principle 5: Transboundary Engagement, Principle 6: GLOCAL

By André Campos Pacific Standard, 2017 “Products derived from timber extracted by workers living in conditions analogous to slave labor in Brazil are connected to a complex business network linked to the United States market— possibly reaching the shelves of large retailers and being used in renovation of landmarks — according to a new investigation conducted by Brazilian … Read more

The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human influenced age.

Leave a Comment / Articles / By admin / October 25, 2019 / Principle 2: Anthropocene as Context

By Damian Carrington The Guardian 2016 Experts say human impact on Earth so profound that Holocene must give way to epoch defined by nuclear tests, plastic pollution and domesticated chicken. In this article, the author describes how the current epoch recently became known as the Anthropocene.