I promised Jara I wouldn’t overthink this one and just get this off Twitter and into a blog post, and I’m really trying hard to live up to that. (I might have overthought “not overthinking it” though.) I also know that with how fast things are moving now, there’s a balance to be struck between deliberateness and irrelevance. The post I’m writing now isn’t the one I would have written last week, nor is it the one I’d write a month from now. It’s the one I’m writing in this moment, sitting on my couch in my apartment where I’ve been mostly alone for the two and a half weeks, since the global pandemic came crashing down on these shores.
Read moreI know what you’re thinking. Do we really need yet another “The Art of”? Can’t we let this naming convention go and find something more creative for our workshop titles? I sympathize, I do, yet here we are. Because this time it’s my turn and, darn it, it’s just such a good description of what we’re up to!
Some of you may have seen me tweet a teaser about this recently, but here’s the full promotional package. From October 16th to November 6th, Rita Fierro and I will be leading an engaging online workshop on practical approaches to developmental evaluation, hosted by our lovely friends at Beehive Productions. There’s more info, including pricing and timing details, on the registration page: Developmental Evaluation: The Art of Learning
Read moreThere’s a really great device that Michael Quinn Patton suggests using in developmental evaluation called ‘sensitizing concepts’. He’s borrowed it from qualitative research methods as a way of providing guidance to inquiry in complexity. Here’s a definition he gives in his qualitative methods book that came out a few years ago:
“Sensitizing concepts are terms, phrases, labels, and constructs that invite inquiry into what they mean to people in the setting(s) being studied. ... Qualitative inquiry using sensitizing concepts leaves terms purposefully undefined to find out what they mean to people in a setting. Sensitizing concepts are windows into a group’s worldview.”
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