Artistic Evaluation

Eisner'S Artistic Evaluation Model

Possibly the most obvious referent would be the approach to educational evaluation that Elliot Eisner has fashioned using art criticism as a model. Eisner's connoisseurship-criticism model can be considered an artistic approach to evaluation for at least four reasons.

First, Eisner draws on a number of aesthetic theories, including those of John Dewey and Susanne Langer, to conceptualize and justify his educational connoisseurship and criticism model. Second, the model emphasizes the use of artistic and literary forms of discourse to describe the program that is being evaluated. (Only evocative, somewhat poetic language can capture the aesthetic dimensions of what is being studied, Eisner argues.) Third, the model emphasizes the eclectic use of social science theory to interpret the phenomena being evaluated, and this eclectic use of theory can be thought of as being artistic, at least ina metaphorical sense, because it is not rule governed or systematized. Finally, Eisner argues that social phenomena are like works of art in a number of respects, including their complexity, and he applies John Dewey's dictum about evaluating works of art to evaluating educational and other social phenomena: The worth of complex phenomena cannot be assessed by applying a predetermined standard; rather, the evaluator's judgment must be employed.

Artistic Forms of Displaying Evaluation Data and Results

The term artistic evaluation might also be used to reference the growing use of art forms and artistic techniques to display evaluation findings. Evaluators' use of alternative forms of data display—including forms that are rooted in the arts—normally is motivated by a desire to communicate more effectively with different evaluation audiences, including audiences that are unlikely to respond positively to (or, for that matter, [Page 21]even to read) traditional social science–sounding evaluation reports.

An example of an artistic data display technique that has been used to communicate evaluation findings in contracted evaluation studies is readers' theater. Readers' theater is a stylized, nonrealistic form of theater in which actors hold scripts and audience members are asked to use their imaginations to visualize details that, in realistic theater, would be provided for them by the scenery and costume designers. In this respect, readers' theater productions are like radio plays; the difference, of course, is that, in a readers' theater production, the actors are visible to the audience and may engage in some visually observable behavior to symbolize certain significant activities(e.g., an actor might turn his back to the audience to symbolize that he or she has left the scene).

Robert Donmoyer and Fred Galloway used readers' theater in an evaluation project funded by the Ball Foundation. The project assessed the foundation's educational reform project in a Southern California school district. Specifically, the readers' theater data display technique was used to communicate evaluation findings to an audience of teachers and administrators involved with the reform. Teachers and administrators in the district also served as readers and actors in the production of the readers' theater script.

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