Fetterman, David M.

(b. 1954, Danielson, Connecticut). Ph.D. Educational and Medical Anthropology, M.A. Education, M.A. Anthropology, Stanford University; B.A. Anthropology, B.S. History of Science, University of Connecticut.

Fetterman is a member of the faculty and Director of the MA (master's program) Policy Analysis and Evaluation Program in the School of Education at Stanford University. He was formerly Professor and Research Director at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Principal Research Scientist at the American Institutes for Research, and Senior Associate and Project Director at RMC Research Corporation. He has conducted fieldwork in both Israel (including living on a kibbutz) and the United States (primarily in inner cities across the country).

Fetterman has contributed to the theory and practice of evaluation through the use of cultural or anthropological theories and field research methods. He has developed the empowerment evaluation approach, for which he is known around the globe. His primary contributions to evaluation theory, preceding his work on empowerment, have been in ethnographic evaluation and cultural approaches to auditing and Internet and computer applications in evaluation. He has advanced theories of the insider's perspective of reality in all of his work, including ethnographic, traditional, and empowerment evaluation.

Fetterman is Past President of the American Evaluation Association, as well as of the American Anthropological Association's Council on Anthropology and Education. He received the American Evaluation Association's Paul Lazarsfeld Award for Evaluation Theory in 2000, the Perloff President Award in 1984, and the Myrdal Award for Evaluation Practice in 1995, as well as the George and Louise Spindler Award for Excellence in Educational Anthropology from the Council on Education and Anthropology. He was also awarded the Washington Association of Practicing Anthropologists’ Praxis Publication Award for translating knowledge into action.

[Page 158]He is General Editor for Garland Publications’ Studies in Education and Culture series and author of Foundations of Empowerment Evaluation; Empowerment Evaluation: Knowledge and Tools for Self-Assessment and Accountability; Speaking the Language of Power: Communication, Collaboration, and Advocacy; Ethnography: Step by Step; Qualitative Approaches to Evaluation in Education: The Silent Scientific Revolution; Excellence and Equality: A Qualitatively Different Perspective on Gifted and Talented Education; Educational Evaluation: Ethnography in Theory, Practice, and Politics; and Ethnography in Educational Evaluation.