CECAN Fellowship: Reimagining Evaluation To Support Transformational Change
Mentors: Ian Christie, Dione Hills, Helen Wilkinson
The Fellowship’s starting premise is that, faced with systems in crisis (obesity; biodiversity; climate etc.), transformational change is required – and this in turn requires new ways of measuring in complex systems.
Andrew Darnton has developed Revaluation as a methodological response to these challenges; while the method has already been applied in the NHS, and by the Welsh Government, there is an opportunity to refine it further, and explore its implications for other evaluation approaches.
The Fellowship would pursue a dialogue between Revaluation and the other complex methods of which CECAN members are leading proponents. Among the key research questions are: Where does Revaluation sit among current methods? What does the concept of ‘double loop learning’ bring to evaluation (and what could triple loop learning add)? What implications does Revaluation foreground for other evaluations e.g. for the role of evaluator/evaluated, for the role of theory, and in terms of audiences? Where in the policy ‘cycle’ might Revaluation generate demonstrable impact? What do these approaches say about ‘spread’, ‘replication’, and ‘rollout’?
These questions would be pursued through discussions between AD and Centre members, and in the context of the CECAN case study evaluations.
