A piece on Program Evaluation by Bob Stake
This Blog is pleased to host other writers - anyone who sees a 'narrative' that needs to be 'multiplied'. To foster argument where others insist there should be none. Bob Stake, many will know, was a prominent, early pioneer of the field of program evaluation, one of the world's first advocates of evaluation Case Study, and author of Responsive Evaluation. In this piece, Bob all but summarises thoughts that have been central to his work, revolving around the rather complex, and certainly little used, idea of the 'Apophatic'. This will repay careful reading, for it is a provocation that strikes to the heart of contract evaluation, a challenge to the contemporary trend towards its simplification and literalness.
APOPHATIC EVALUATION
by Bob Stake
[Apophatic: to know something by its negatives or alternatives]
“Get up closer,” I was told. To better know the evaluand, you need to take a closer look.
But here, now, is a linguist saying, “indirect is better than direct.”
François Jullien writes: “In what way do we benefit from speaking of things indirectly?
How does such a distancing allow us better to discover—and describe—people and objects? What can we gain from approaching the world obliquely?
In other words, how do distancing and detour grant access?”
Jullien is a French philosopher, particularly studying early Chinese writing, writing on writing.
He favors “allusive distance.” In decentralizing Western thought, through contrast with Eastern writing, he seeks a deeper understanding of the advances of literature and reason in Greek and subsequent English.
He doesn’t reveal any thinking about professional evaluation. But is there a field having better room for reflection?
Jullien’s 2000 book is titled, Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece. He says: “The Chinese are thus placed in the role of the other, par excellence, to serve conveniently as the diametric opposite.” We too are compared. “As Westerners,” he says, “we express ourselves directly. We go straight to the marrow of things, guided by an ‘instinct of rectilinearity,’ which is also the shortest path to the truth.”
What’s better? For Jullien, Confucius provided a train of subtle remarks, leading more or less nowhere. Confucius aimed little to illuminate reality. He approached the real through detour and otherness. “Access indirectly, through detour,” Jullien advises.
“Apophatic” defines a universal inability. At least a waiting to say certain things of importance. (Franke, 2007). It has many off-center voices, in philosophy, literature and art, acknowledging the realized feeling that words just don’t say it. Still it can be real as the words “off-center” are..
Let me pause in effort to allude to apophatic with a poem by John Donne.
If that be simply perfectest
Which can by no way be expresst
But negatives, my love is so.
To All. Which all love, I say no.
We in program evaluation, together with all critics, seek meaning of quality. We seek rigor and frailty. Quickly we identify evaluand and evaluator, each with habitat and history and catalogue of values. Merit and failing are at the bull’s-eye. But there will be no outcome, no truth, nothing to be understood, without acquaintance of the evaluand. Acquaintance’s the writer’s prey. Yet, acquaintance often lies beyond expression.
Sometimes we conjecture essentiality, the essence as prey. The essence of a program. The essence of organization. The essence of a patient or leader. Some evaluations are designed to tease out the essence of evaluands. Klaus Witz, mathematician and spiritualist, case study methodologist, did that. Many others do that, using a single criterion of goodness, a final score.
Witz called his method “portraiture.” He searched for essences. But programs, and organizations, and other evaluand-targets seldom have essences. Is it not better not to imply they will be found?
Evaluands have experiences, habits, styles, works, mates, and other properties and adventures to be studied, compared and exemplified, and from them, they are acquainted and described--
so that readers will better know “what” has been evaluated. What meaning can outcomes have without knowing the evaluand?
It makes little sense to say what entity is being eyed by identifying just its name, such as the Lincoln School or Veterans Benefits Service or Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt. Nor just its thrust, such as parenting or saving democracy. Those who minister quality should know a lot about
the evaluand’s conglomerate of being and doing. We are obligated to make acquaintance with the evaluand.
I take it Françios Jullien is speaking also to us evaluators. At times he refers to phenomenology, and painting, and poetry. Mostly he speaks about writing. By intent he leaves some things unsaid.
For method, he quotes Jin Shengtan, a 16th Century Chinese editor, saying, “the literary text is more ‘successful’ when, as our gaze is turned away to that side, our hand writes on this side. …
The author must not directly write what he initially has in view. He must write alongside.”
Alongside what? Where is the creative power of the reader? Jullien and Shengtan leave too much unsaid, barely implying that researchers do not encounter all that could be known
nor can the writers say all that they know. Where is more to be found?
Jullien and Shengtan do not say directly how writing alongside helps the reader. But we know the reader may have experience the writer does not have and may merge it with what the writer says, thus having even more. Evaluator Tom Hastings asked for “The Whys of the Outcomes.”
Concentrating on the inquiry, Jullien continues, “From the distance taken, the possibility of a return emerges—making the distance traveled a detour. The most successful thing is when our gaze is turned to one side, not to assume writing … but to get as far from it as possible, then come back, by meandering, to the point of approaching it, but stopping; then to take a distance again, to get a new start, and then to come back, again meandering, approaching it and stopping once again.” Some writing surely, more meandering to come.
He continues, “One can never fully explain what one wishes to say except by pointing toward it.
To write well is to graze the surface while never ceasing to come back to it.” This is to forego finding essence, and even to avoid implying seeking one. Even if the evaluator states that a promised essence could not be found, a sponsor may infer enough was found. An essence is not to be found in allusive distancing, but parcels of the unknown may increasingly be alluded to. Is there market for parcels? It happens.
With allusion, with meandering, the greater circumference comes alongside. The context grows. Knowing the surround, the evaluand is better known. Detours make the travel longer, sketching in the landscape. And less time is spent nearby. For us instead, the proximal is reified, overworked onto the account, dominating the conversation.
Detours do not imply alternative destinations. They offer safer tracks to that originally sought somewhere. That will be attractive to some writers. Who among us have not found satisfaction in alternative theses? Writers and readers. But anticipating distanced alternatives potentially as aims is just not right. We shun deceptive advertising. An ethical doctor is optimistic in describing recovery. We sprinkle hope. Sometimes we need be more honest.
It is not dishonest to slide to a better track. Don’t we write and live life seizing opportunities steering ’round dangers, when we can. We teachers too learn, and work to teach our readers with us. Would François Jullien believe that a well-planned target should always remain the target of our directions? Are we not creators of text up and through the final paragraph? Whether Greek or Chinese, writing is a part of life, and direction and indirection remain choices through every chapter. There is no essence to our pages. A lot depends upon the apophatic.
We evaluate, with intended evaluands and evaluation platforms. We are faithful to our contracts and dispositions, respectful of our sponsors, readers, and citizenry. And yet we choose our paths and detours as we go, careful to wear belts. To write is to rechoose a destiny.
Evaluation is special in its service. It has customers. It shares ethics and has some of its own.
But also it is self-serving, seeking to heed the mirror, non-profit, but needing cash in the till.
Jullien is a historian, telling how two roads have been taken. So will we.
References
William Franke, 2007. On what cannot be said. University of Notre Dame Press.
Hastings, J. Thomas, 1966. Curriculum evaluation: The whys of the outcomes. Journal of Educatonal Measurement, 3, 27-32.
François Jullien, 2004. Detour and Access. Zone Books.
Jin Shengtan, 1986. Du di liu cat zi shu Xixiangji, ed. Zhang Guoguang-hai:Shanghai guji chubanshe, 15, 13