Professional Standards and
Principles for |
Description: Professional standards and principles are essential guides for effective and ethical evaluation practice. They provide criteria for designing comprehensive evaluations; for stimulating use of findings; and for teaching clients what evaluation is and what can and should be expected from evaluative efforts. And, when used in proposal development, may provide evidence of evaluator knowledge and capability. This course will introduce the Joint Committee's Program Evaluation Standards and AEA's Guiding Principles, examine strategies for using them to enhance evaluation quality, and explore issues that can arise in their application (e.g., dealing with conflicting priorities, generalizing across disciplines and cultures). The course also addresses how the Standards/Principles can be employed to prevent, and respond effectively to, ethical problems encountered as an evaluation unfolds. Participants will have an opportunity to apply their learning to case studies involving evaluation planning and ethical challenges. A copy of AEA's Guiding Principles and the Joint Committee's Program Evaluation Standards text (Sage, 1994) and other course materials will be provided as a part of the registration fee. Instructor: Dr. Michael Morris is Professor of Psychology at the University of New Haven, where he serves as Director of the Master's Program in Community Psychology, and where, in 1985, he received the University's Award for Distinguished Teaching. His 1993 study, "Program Evaluators and Ethical Challenges" (published in Evaluation Review) was the first national survey examining the ethical conflicts faced by evaluators. A former chair of AEA's Ethics Committee, he co-edited an issue of New Directions for Evaluation devoted to "Current and Emerging Ethical Challenges in Evaluation." His work has appeared in many journals, including the American Journal of Evaluation, Evaluation and Program Planning, Social Policy, American Journal of Community Psychology, Sociology and Social Research, and The American Sociologist. He is co-author of Poverty and Public Policy (Greenwood Press, 1986) and co-editor of Myths about the Powerless (Temple University Press, 1996) and has authored several invited book chapters, including one on ethics in The International Handbook on Educational Evaluation (2003). He was editor of AJE's Ethical Challenges column from 1998-2004. For the past two decades he has worked as an organizational consultant for a variety of human-services and public-sector agencies, and currently serves as an evaluator for the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. He is now writing a book on ethical issues in evaluation that will be published in 2007 by Guilford Publications.
Certificate: CEP IA.d Fee: $795 |
