Kushner, Saville

(b. 1947, Leeds, U.K.). Ph.D., University of East Anglia; Dip. Ed., Bristol University; B.Sc. Economics, London University.

Kushner is a program and policy evaluator by professional practice, as well as Professor of Applied Research in Education and Director of the Center for Research in Education and Democracy at the University of the West of England.

He has, for many years, been a member of a transatlantic group of evaluation practitioners and theorists developing democratic and case study methodologies for program evaluation. He has conducted evaluations in fields as diverse as schooling, the performing arts, research funding, police training, computer technology, and health services. His primary contribution to evaluation theory and practice has been an elaboration of democracy and case study through the concept of “personalizing evaluation.”

Kushner was Lawrence Stenhouse's research student at the University of East Anglia and learned educational values and philosophy from him, developing his educational ethics and concept of curriculum from Stenhouse. Kushner worked with Stenhouse's close friend and colleague Barry MacDonald for 20 years and learned, through him, a commitment to evaluation as democratic action and to case study for portraying the drama of institutional struggle. Evaluation experiences at Summerhill School had a significant influence on Kushner's educational ethic, and A. S. Neill now assumes equal position with Stenhouse as an influence. Intellectually, Kushner has been most influenced by the work of Bob Stake in the United States and MacDonald in Europe, but he also acknowledges the impact on him of inspirational writers on existentialism, including Peter Berger and Donald Schon; an aspiration to write narrative portrayals with the economy and drama of Dashiel Hammett; and a desire to emancipate youth by challenging the icons of older generations from the work of surrealist Andre Breton.

Kushner's recent book Personalizing Evaluation (which was also translated into Spanish) provides a fresh, new perspective on evaluation, one that begins with the experiences and narratives of participants from various programs.