Conflicts Between Standards-Based and Postmodernist Evaluations: Toward Rapprochement

Abstract

Postmodernism is a body of thinking about evaluation that is skeptical of present views, practices, and results of evaluations and their abilities to deliver dependable, useful answers to evaluation questions. This article disagrees with these positions and claims that there exists a substantial foundation from which to continue to professionalize evaluation services and employ them to meet societal needs. Standards-based evaluations, however, must be open to criticism, seek improvements, and be representative of diverse groups concerned with education and evaluation. The Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation provides a mechanism for these important functions of standards-based evaluations to be realized. The Joint Committee is a resource for postmodern thinkers to improve present evaluation concepts and practices. There are many commonalties between postmodern and standards-based perspectives including the role of value and bias, social context, political context, mixed methods, and the need for improvement. Standards also have several unique features including the establishment of widely shared principles, the development of professionalism, and the ability to reach closure and make decisions. Given these differences, ten questions are responded to from a standards-based perspective keyed to the concerns of postmodernists.