Empowerment Evaluation and Social Justice: Confronting the Culture of Silence

From the founder of empowerment evaluation (EE), a framework uniquely suited to advancing social justice causes, this book explains the theories, principles, and steps of conducting EE from scratch or within a preexisting evaluation or work plan. David M. Fetterman describes how EE enables program planners and participants to define their mission or purpose, take stock of how well they are doing, and plan for the future to achieve self-determined goals. EEs of two large programs (Feeding America and USAID/REACH) are discussed in depth; other EE case examples address such topics as raising test scores in impoverished and rural schools and bridging the digital divide in communities of color. User-friendly features include chapters on conducting EE remotely and frequently asked questions, as well as illuminating sidebars and glossaries of acronyms and concepts/terms.

David M. Fetterman, PhD, is president and CEO of Fetterman and Associates, an international evaluation consulting firm, and the founder of empowerment evaluation. Dr. Fetterman has worked in more than 17 countries--in South African townships and Native American reservations, as well as in Silicon Valley tech firms, including Google and Hewlett-Packard--and has 25 years of experience at Stanford University, serving as a School of Education faculty member, the School of Medicine director of evaluation, and a senior member of the University administration. He currently serves as a faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute and Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Fetterman is past president of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) and the Council on Anthropology and Education of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). He is a recipient of honors including the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Evaluation Theory Award and the Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Evaluation Practice Award from the AEA; the President’s Award from the AAA; the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Research on Evaluation Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association; and the Award for Excellence in Research from the Mensa Foundation. He is the author or editor of numerous books.