Feminist Research and its Politics of Evaluation along with Challenging Traditional Paradigms

The Feminist Research and its Politics of Evaluation along with Challenging Traditional Paradigms. Feminist research, a methodology rooted in feminist theory, critically examines power dynamics and social inequalities, particularly those of gender. It challenges traditional research paradigms by emphasizing reflexivity, diversity of methods, and the inclusion of marginalized voices. Feminist evaluation, a related field, focuses on ensuring that diverse stakeholders, including marginalized groups, are actively involved in evaluation design and knowledge generation.

What is Feminist Research and its Politics of Evaluation along with Challenging Traditional Paradigms

A summary of the three paradigms

some of the broad differences between the three approaches that we have made so far.

Emergence of Feminist Research

It is perhaps no mere coincidence that feminist research should surface as a serious issue at the same time as ideology-critical paradigms for research; they are closely connected.

Core Principles of Feminist Research

Usher (1996), although criticizing Habermas (p. 124) for his faith in family life as a haven from a heartless, exploitative world, nevertheless sets out several principles of feminist research that resonate with the ideology critique of the Frankfurt School:

1. The acknowledgement of the pervasive influence of gender as a category of analysis and organization.
2. The deconstruction of traditional commitments to truth, objectivity and neutrality.
3. The adoption of an approach to knowledge creation which recognizes that all theories are perspectival.
4. The utilization of a multiplicity of research methods.
5. The inter-disciplinary nature of feminist research.
6. Involvement of the researcher and the people being researched.
7. The deconstruction of the theory/practice relationship.
8. Challenging Power Structures in Research

Her suggestions build on earlier recognition of the significance of addressing the ‘power issue’ in research (‘whose research’, ‘research for whom’, ‘research in whose interests’) and the need to address the emancipatory element of educational research—that research should be empowering to all participants.

The paradigm of critical theory questioned the putative objective, neutral, value-free, positivist, ‘scientific’ paradigm for the splitting of theory and practice and for its reproduction of asymmetries of power (reproducing power differentials in the research community and for treating participants/respondents instrumentally—as objects). Feminist research, too, challenges the legitimacy of research that does not empower op pressed and otherwise invisible groups—women.

Problem with ‘Objective’ Research

Positivist research served a given set of power relations, typically empowering the white, male dominated research community at the expense of other groups whose voices were silenced. It had this latent, if not manifest or deliberate (Merton, 1967) function or outcome; it had this substantive effect (or maybe even agenda).

Feminist research seeks to demolish and replace this with a different substantive agenda—of empowerment, voice, emancipation, equality and representation for oppressed groups. In doing so, it recognizes the necessity for foregrounding issues of power, silencing and voicing, ideology critique and a questioning of the legitimacy of research that does not emancipate hitherto disempowered groups.

Methodological Innovations in Feminist Research

The issue of empowerment resonates with the work of Freire (1970) on ‘conscientization’, wherein oppressed groups—in his case the illiterate poor—are taught to read and write by focusing on their lived experiences, e.g. of power, poverty, oppression, such that a political agenda is raised in their learning.

Consciousness-Raising as Research Method

In feminist research, women’s consciousness of oppression, exploitation and disempowerment becomes a focus for research—the paradigm of ideology critique. Far from treating educational research as objective and value-free, feminists argue that this is merely a smokescreen that serves the existing, disempowering status quo, and that the subject and value-laden nature of research must be surfaced, exposed and engaged (Haig, 1999:223).

This entails taking seriously issues of reflexivity, the effects of the research on the researched and the re searchers, the breakdown of the positivist paradigm, and the raising of consciousness of the purposes and effects of the research. Indeed Ribbens and Edwards (1997) suggest that it is important to ask how researchers can produce work with reference to theoretical perspectives and formal traditions and requirements of public, academic knowledge whilst still remaining faithful to the experiences and accounts of research participants.

Key Methodological Principles

Denzin (1989), Mies (1993) and Haig (1999) argue for several principles in feminist research:

• The asymmetry of gender relations and representation must be studied reflexively as constituting a fundamental aspect of social life (which includes educational research).
• Women’s issues, their history, biography and biology, feature as a substantive agenda/focus in research—moving beyond mere perspectival/methodological issues to setting a research agenda.
• The raising of consciousness of oppression, exploitation, empowerment, equality, voice and representation is a methodological tool.
• The acceptability and notion of objectivity and objective research must be challenged.
• The substantive, value-laden dimensions and purposes of feminist research must be paramount.
• Research must empower women.
• Research need not only be undertaken by academic experts.
• Collective research is necessary—women need to collectivize their own individual histories if they are to appropriate these histories for emancipation.
• There is a commitment to revealing core processes and recurring features of women’s oppression.
• An insistence on the inseparability of theory and practice.
• An insistence on the connections between the private and the public, between the domestic and the political.
• A concern with the construction and reproduction of gender and sexual difference.
• A rejection of narrow disciplinary boundaries.
• A rejection of the artificial subject/researcher dualism.
• A rejection of positivism and objectivity as male mythology.
• The increased use of qualitative, introspective biographical research techniques.
• A recognition of the gendered nature of social research and the development of anti-sexist research strategies.
• A review of the research process as conscious ness and awareness rising and as fundamentally participatory.
• The primacy of women’s personal subjective experience.
• The rejection of hierarchies in social research.
• The vertical, hierarchical relationships of re searchers/research community and research objects, in which the research itself can become an instrument of domination and the reproduction and legitimation of power elites has to be replaced by research that promotes the interests of dominated, oppressed, exploited groups.
• The recognition of equal status and reciprocal relationships between subjects and re searchers.
• There is a need to change the status quo, not merely to understand or interpret it.
• The research must be a process of conscientization, not research solely by experts for experts, but to empower oppressed participants.

Gender shapes research agendas, the choice of topics and foci, the choice of data collection techniques and the relationships between researchers and researched. Several methodological principles flow from a ‘rationale’ for feminist research (Denzin, 1989; Mies, 1993; Haig, 1997, 1999):

• The replacement of quantitative, positivist, objective research with qualitative, interpretive, ethnographic reflexive research.
• Collaborative, collectivist research under taken by collectives—often of women—combining researchers and researched in order to break subject/object and hierarchical, non-reciprocal relationships.
• The appeal to alleged value-free, neutral, in different and impartial research has to be re placed by conscious, deliberate partiality— through researchers identifying with participants.
• The use of ideology-critical approaches and paradigms for research.
• The spectator theory or contemplative theory of knowledge in which researchers research from ivory towers has to be re placed by a participatory approach—perhaps action research—in which all participants (including researchers) engage in the struggle for women’s emancipation—a laboratory methodology.
• The need to change the status quo is the starting point for social research—if we want to know something we change it. (Mies (1993) cites the Chinese saying that if you want to know a pear then you must chew it!).
• The extended use of triangulation and multiple methods (including visual techniques such as video, photograph and film).
• The use of linguistic techniques such as conversational analysis.
• The use of textual analysis such as deconstruction of documents and texts about women.
• The use of meta-analysis to synthesize findings from individual studies.
• A move away from numerical surveys and a critical evaluation of them, including a critique of question wording.

The drive towards collective, egalitarian and emancipatory qualitative research is seen as necessary if women are to avoid colluding in their own oppression by undertaking positivist, un involved, objective research. Mies (ibid.: 67) argues that for women to undertake this latter form of research puts them into a schizophrenic position of having to adopt methods which con tribute to their own subjugation and repression by ignoring their experience (however vicarious) of oppression and by forcing them to abide by the ‘rules of the game’ of the competitive, male dominated academic world.

In this view, argue Roman and Apple (1990:59) it is not enough for women simply to embrace ethnographic forms of research, as this does not necessarily challenge the existing and constituting forces of oppression or asymmetries of power. Ethno graphic research, they argue, has to be accompanied by ideology critique, indeed they argue that the transformative, empowering, emancipatory potential of a piece of research is a critical standard for evaluating that piece of research.

Debates Within Feminist Research

However, these views of feminist research and methodology are not unchallenged by other feminist researchers.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Debate

For example Jayaratne (1993:109) argues for ‘fitness for purpose’, suggesting that exclusive focus on qualitative methodologies might not be appropriate either for the research purposes or, indeed, for advancing the feminist agenda. She refutes the argument that quantitative methods are unsuitable for feminists because they neglect the emotions of the people under study. Indeed she argues for beating quantitative research on its own grounds (p. 121), suggesting the need for feminist quantitative data and methodologies in order to counter sexist quantitative data in the social sciences. She suggests that feminist researchers can accomplish this without ‘selling out’ to the positivist, male-dominated academic research community.

Practical Applications: The GIST Project

An example of a feminist approach to research is the Girls Into Science and Technology (GIST) action research project. This took place over three years and involved 2,000 students and their teachers in ten co-educational, comprehensive schools in the Greater Manchester area of the UK, eight schools serving as the bases of the ‘action’, the remaining two acting as ‘controls’. Several publications have documented the methodologies and findings of the GIST study (Whyte, 1986; Kelly, 1986, 1989a, 1989b; Kelly and Smail, 1986), described by its codirector as ‘simultaneous-integrated action research’ (Kelly, 1987) (i.e. integrating action and research).

Politics of Research and Evaluation

The preceding discussion has suggested that research and politics are inextricably bound together. This can be taken further, as researchers in education will be advised to pay serious consideration to the politics of their research enterprise and the ways in which politics can steer research.

Rise of Evaluative Research

For example one can detect a trend in educational research towards more evaluative research, where, for instance, a researcher’s task is to evaluate the effectiveness (often of the implementation) of given policies and projects. This is particularly true in the case of ‘categorically funded’ and commissioned research—research which is funded by policy-makers (e.g. governments, fund-awarding bodies) under any number of different headings that those policy-makers devise (Burgess, 1993).

On the one hand this is laudable, for it targets research directly towards policy; on the other hand it is dangerous in that it enables others to set the research agenda. Research ceases to become open-ended, pure research, and, instead, becomes the evaluation of given initiatives. Less politically charged, much research is evaluative, and indeed there are many similarities between research and evaluation. The two overlap but possess important differences.

Understanding Research vs. Evaluation

The problem of trying to identify differences between evaluation and research is compounded because not only do they share several of the same methodological characteristics but one branch of research is called evaluative research or applied research. This is often kept separate from ‘blue skies’ research in that the latter is open-ended, exploratory, contributes something original to the substantive field and extends the frontiers of knowledge and theory whereas in the former the theory is given rather than interrogated or tested.

Similarities Between Research and Evaluation

One can detect many similarities between the two in that they both use methodologies and methods of social science research generally, covering, for example:

• the need to clarify the purposes of the investigation;
• the need to operationalize purposes and areas of investigation;
• the need to address principles of research de sign that include:

(a) formulating operational questions;

(b) deciding appropriate methodologies;

(c) deciding which instruments to use for data collection;

(d) deciding on the sample for the investigation;

(e) addressing reliability and validity in the investigation and instrumentation;

(f) addressing ethical issues in conducting the investigation;

(g) deciding on data analysis techniques;

(h) deciding on reporting and interpreting results.

Indeed Norris (1990) argues that evaluation applies research methods to shed light on a problem of action (Norris, 1990:97); he suggests that evaluation can be viewed as an extension of research, because it shares its methodologies and methods, and because evaluators and researchers possess similar skills in conducting investigations. In many senses the eight features out lined above embrace many elements of the scientific method, which Smith and Glass (1987) set out thus:

Step 1 A theory about the phenomenon exists.

Step 2 A research problem within the theory is detected and a research question is devised.

Step 3 A research hypothesis is deduced (often about the relationship between constructs).

Step 4 A research designs are developed, operationalizing the research question and stat ing the null hypothesis.

Step 5 The research is conducted.

Step 6 The null hypothesis is tested based on the data gathered.

Step 7 The original theory is revised or supported based on the results of the hypothesis testing.

Indeed, if steps 1 and 7 were removed then there would be nothing to distinguish between research and evaluation. Both researchers and evaluators pose questions and hypotheses, select samples, manipulate and measure variables, compute statistics and data, and state conclusions.

Key Differences

Nevertheless several commentators suggest that there are important differences between evaluation and research that are not always obvious simply by looking at publications. Publications do not always make clear the background events that gave rise to the investigation, nor do they always make clear the uses of the material that they report, nor do they always make clear what the dissemination rights (Sanday, 1993) are and who holds them. Several commentators set out some of the differences between evaluation and research. For example Smith and Glass (1987) offer eight main differences:

1 The intents and purposes of the investigation. The researcher wants to advance the frontiers of knowledge of phenomena, to contribute to theory and to be able to make generalizations; the evaluator is less interested in contributing to theory or general body of knowledge. Evaluation is more parochial than universal (pp. 33–4).

2 The scope of the investigation Evaluation studies tend to be more comprehensive than research in the number and variety of aspects of a programmer that are being studied (p. 34).

3 Values in the investigation Research aspires to value neutrality, evaluations must represent multiple sets of values and include data on these values.

4 The origins of the study Research has its origins and motivation in the researcher’s curiosity and desire to know (p. 34). The re searcher is answerable to colleagues and scientists (i.e. the research community) whereas the evaluator is answerable to the ‘client’. The researcher is autonomous whereas the evaluator is answerable to clients and stakeholders. The researcher is motivated by a search for knowledge, the evaluator is motivated by the need to solve problems, allocate resources and make decisions. Research studies are public; evaluations are for a restricted audience.

5 The uses of the study. The research is used to further knowledge; evaluations are used to inform decisions.

6 The timeliness of the study Evaluations must be timely, research need not be. Evaluators’ time scales are given, researchers’ time scales need not be given.

7 Criteria for judging the study Evaluations are judged by the criteria of utility and credibility, research is judged methodologically and by the contribution that it makes to the field (i.e. internal and external validity).

8 The agendas of the study. An evaluator’s agenda is given; a researcher’s agenda is her own. Norris (1990) reports an earlier piece of work by Glass and Worthen in which they identified important differences between evaluation and research:

• The motivation of the enquirer Research is pursued largely to satisfy curiosity, evaluation is undertaken to contribute to the solution of a problem.
• The objectives of the search Research and evaluation seek different ends. Research seeks conclusions, evaluation leads to decisions.
• Laws versus description Research is the quest for laws (nomothetic), evaluation merely seeks to describe a particular thing (idiographic).
• The role of explanation Proper and useful evaluation can be conducted without producing an explanation of why the product or project is good or bad or of how it operates to produce its effects.
• The autonomy of the inquiry Evaluation is undertaken at the behest of a client, while researchers set their own problems.
• Properties of the phenomena that are assessed Evaluation seeks to assess social utility directly; research may yield evidence of social utility but often only indirectly.
• Universality of the phenomena studied Re searchers work with constructs having a currency and scope of application that make the objects of evaluation seem parochial by comparison.
• Salience of the value question. In evaluation value questions are central and usually deter mine what information is sought.
• Investigative techniques. While there may be legitimate differences between research and evaluation methods, there are far more similarities than differences with regard to techniques and procedures for judging validity.
• Criteria for assessing the activity the two most important criteria for judging the adequacy of research are internal and external validity, for evaluation they are utility and credibility.
• Disciplinary base the researcher can afford to pursue inquiry within one discipline and the evaluator cannot.

A clue to some of the differences between evaluation and research can be seen in the definition of evaluation. Most definitions of evaluation include reference to several key features:

(1) an swering specific, given questions

(2) gathering information

(3) making judgments

(4) taking decisions

(5) addressing the politics of a situation (Morrison, 1993:2).

Morrison provides one definition of evaluation as: the provision of information about specified issues upon which judgements are based and from which decisions for action are taken (ibid., p. 2). This view echoes MacDonald (1987) in his comments that the evaluator: is faced with competing interest groups, with divergent definitions of the situation and conflicting informational needs… He has to decide which decision-makers he will serve, what in formation will be of most use, when it is needed and how it can be obtained.

I am suggesting that the resolution of these issues commits the evaluator to a political stance, an attitude to the government of education. No such commitment is required of the researcher. He stands outside the political process, and values his detachment from it. For him the production of new knowledge and its social use are separated. The evaluator is embroiled in the action, built into a political process which concerns the distribution of power, i.e. the allocation of resources and the determination of goals, roles and tasks… When evaluation data influences power relationships the evaluator is compelled to weight carefully the consequences of his task specification.

The researcher is free to select his questions, and to seek answers to them. The evaluator, on the other hand, must never fall into the error of answering questions which no one but he is asking. (MacDonald, 1987:42) MacDonald argues that evaluation is an inherently political enterprise. His much-used three fold typification of evaluations as autocratic, bureaucratic and democratic is premised on a political reading of evaluation (a view echoed by Chelinsky and Mulhauser, 1993, who refer to ‘the inescapability of politics’ (p. 54) in the world of evaluation).

MacDonald (1987), noting that ‘educational research is becoming more evaluative in character’ (p. 101), argues for research to be kept out of politics and for evaluation to square up to the political issues at stake: The danger therefore of conceptualizing evaluation as a branch of research is that evaluators become trapped in the restrictive tentacles of research respectability. Purity may be substituted for utility, trivial proofs for clumsy attempts to grasp complex significance. How much more productive it would be to define research as a branch of evaluation, a branch whose task it is to solve the technological problems encountered by the evaluator. (MacDonald, 1987:43)

Political Reality of Research

However, these typifications are very much ‘ideal types’; the truth of the matter is far more blurred than these distinctions suggest. Two principal causes of this blurring lie in the funding and the politics of both evaluation and research.

Blurred Boundaries in Practice

For example, the view of research as uncontaminated by everyday life is naïve and simplistic; Norris (1990) argues that such an antiseptic view of research ignores the social context of educational inquiry, the hierarchies of research communities, the re ward structure of universities, the role of central government in supporting certain projects and not others, and the long-established relationships between social research and reform. It is, in short, an asocial and ahistorical account. (Norris, 1990:99) The quotation from Norris (in particular the first three phrases) has a pedigree that reaches back to Kuhn (1962).

After that his analysis becomes much more contemporaneous. Norris is making an important comment on the politics of research funding and research utilization. Since the early 1980s one can detect a massive rise in ‘categorical’ funding of projects, i.e. defined, given projects (often by government or research sponsors) for which bids have to be placed.

This may seem unsurprising if one is discussing research grants by the Department for Education and Employment in the UK, which are deliberately policy-oriented, though one can also detect in projects that have been granted by non-governmental organizations (e.g. the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK) a move towards sponsoring policy oriented projects rather than the ‘blue-skies’ research mentioned earlier. Indeed Burgess (1993) argues that ‘researchers are little more than contract workers…research in education must become policy relevant…research must come closer to the requirement of practitioners’ (Burgess, 1993:1).

This view is reinforced by several articles in the collection edited by Anderson and Biddle (1991) which show that research and politics go together uncomfortably because researchers have different agendas and longer time scales than politicians and try to address the complexity of situations, whereas politicians, anxious for short-term survival want telescoped time scales, simple remedies and research that will be consonant with their political agendas.

Selective Use of Evidence

Indeed James (1993) argues that the power of research-based evaluation to provide evidence on which rational decisions can be expected to be made is quite limited. Policy-makers will always find reasons to ignore, or be highly selective of, evaluation findings if the information does not support the particular political agenda operating at the time when decisions have to be made. (James, 1993:135) The politicization of research has resulted in funding bodies awarding research grants for categorical research that specify time scales and the terms of reference.

Burgess’s view also points to the constraints under which research is undertaken; if it is not concerned with policy issues then research tends not to be funded. One could support Burgess’s view that research must have some impact on policy-making. Not only is research becoming a political issue, but this extends to the use being made of evaluation studies. It was argued above that evaluations are designed to provide useful data to inform decision-making. However, as evaluation has become more politicized so its uses (or non-uses) have become more politicized.

In deed Norris (1990) shows how politics frequently overrides evaluation or research evidence. He writes: When the national extension of the TVEI was announced, both the neither Leeds nor NFER team had reported and it had appeared that the decision to extend the initiative had been taken irrespective of any evaluation findings. (Norris, 1990:135) This echoes James (1993) where she writes:

The classic definition of the role of evaluation as providing information for decision-makers…is a fiction if this is taken to mean that policy-makers who commission evaluations are expected to make rational decisions based on the best (valid and reliable) information available to them. (James, 1993:119).

Problem of ‘Confirmative’ Evaluations

Where evaluations are commissioned and have heavily political implications, Stronach and Morris (1994) argue that the response to this is that evaluations become more ‘conformative’. ‘Conformative evaluations’, they argue, have several characteristics:

• Short-term, taking project goals as given, and supporting their realization.
• Ignoring the evaluation of longer-term learning outcomes, or anticipated economic/social consequences of the programme.
• Giving undue weight to the perceptions of programme participants who are responsible for the successful development and implementation of the programme; as a result, tending to ‘over-report’ change.
• Neglecting and ‘under-reporting’ the views of classroom practitioners, and programme critics. • Adopting a theoretical approach, and generally regarding the aggregation of opinion as the determination of overall significance.
• Involving a tight contractual relationship with the programme sponsors that either disbars public reporting, or encourages self-censorship in order to protect future funding prospects.
• Undertaking various forms of implicit advocacy for the programme in its reporting style.
• Creating and reinforcing a professional schizophrenia in the research and evaluation community, whereby individuals come to hold divergent public and private opinions, or offer criticisms in general rather than in particular, or quietly develop ‘academic’ critiques which are at variance with their contractual evaluation activities, alternating between ‘critical’ and ‘conformative’ selves.

Micro-Politics of Research

The argument so far has been confined to large-scale projects that are influenced by and may or may not influence political decision making. However the argument need not remain there. Morrison (1993) for example indicates how evaluations might influence the ‘micro-politics of the school’. Hoyle (1986) asks whether evaluation data are used to bring resources into, or take resources out of, a department or faculty.

The issue does not relate only to evaluations, for school-based research, far from the emancipatory claims for it made by action researchers (e.g. Carr and Kemmis, 1986; Grundy, 1987), is often concerned more with finding out the most successful ways of organization, planning, teaching and assessment of a given agenda rather than setting agendas and following one’s own research agendas.

This is problem-solving rather than problem setting. That evaluation and research are being drawn together by politics at both a macro and micro level is evidence of a growing interventionism by politics into education, thus rein forcing the hegemony of the government in power. Several points have been made here:

• there is considerable overlap between evaluation and research;
• there are some conceptual differences between evaluation and research, though, in practice, there is considerable blurring of the edges of the differences between the two;
• the funding and control of research and research agendas reflect the persuasions of political decision-makers;
• evaluative research has increased in response to categorical funding of research projects;
• the attention being given to, and utilization of, evaluation varies according to the consonance between the findings and their political attractiveness to political decision-makers.

In this sense the views expressed earlier by MacDonald are now little more than an historical relic; there is very considerable blurring of the edges between evaluation and research because of the political intrusion into, and use of, these two types of study. One response to this can be seen in Burgess’s (1993) view that are searcher needs to be able to meet the sponsor’s requirements for evaluation whilst also generating research data (engaging the issues of the need to negotiate ownership of the data and intellectual property rights).

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