Evaluation and Action Research: An Integrated Framework to Promote Data Literacy and Ethical Practices

"In this chapter, we introduce the idea of a new framework for research. Within our writing, we define our framework as a model for practice that can be used by people within the organization: these could be leaders, colleagues, researcher-practitioners,and evaluators to improve practice and solve problems in context. The book is about providing support for the thousands of people in organizations who are tasked with finding and solving problems, whether they are formal internal evaluators or not. Our book will enhance organizational capacity to understand and develop these frameworks. Our goal is to introduce this integrated framework in a way that you, our readers can see its connection to your settings, and apply the underlying shared positions and principles to your own work. Finally, the described model serves as the foundation upon which all other chapters' contents have been developed"--
Today's societies require research approaches that are creative, sensitive to cultural and contextual diversity, rooted in engagement and critical dispositions, and situated within local contexts. Action research and evaluation are inquiries into and about human lives. Both modes generateactionable data in specific contexts to facilitate positive social change and to further social justice. This book explores the potential of integrating action research and evaluation frameworks to encourage knowledge democracy, data literacy, and ethical practices. The authors draw a clear connection between program enactment and program goals, investigating the processes of design, qualitative andquantitative data collection, and analysis, and mixed methods considerations. Key questions include: why is new research paradigm needed? How do we define data literacy? How do we understand equitable societies? Working from the belief that knowledge is created constantly in our world by those inreal-world settings and practical contexts, Evaluation and Action Research provides practitioners with an accessible guide to better inform practice and decision making.