"I enjoyed the book. I found the approach refreshing and useful. The structure of the book made the argument easy to follow...Practitioners of evaluation, or any organizational change process, will find the approach useful.
-Anona Armstrong, Evaluation Journal of Australasia
"This important volume represents a paradigm shift in the evaluation field - presenting an approach that shifts evaluation from being something that we 'should' do to something that stakeholders can 'look forward' to doing, even something they might actually love doing... turning what can often be drudgery that ends up with reports that sit on shelves to dynamic processes that are downright fun, while at the same time profound, resulting in accelerating positive change in organizations, programs, and those who are part of them. The book challenges the basic tenets underlying evaluation, pushes the boundaries of the discipline. The field may never be the same."
-Malcolm J. Odell, Jr., Appreciative Inquiry Consulting, LLC
"I am delighted that the authors have taken AI and found new uses for this approach. They provide concrete examples of the many ways evaluators have successfully used the AI approach in a wide variety of program and geographic settings. Combining theory and practice, this book is an important contribution to the evaluation field."
-Gail Johnson, The Evergreen State College
-Gail Johnson,
Reframing Evaluation Through Appreciative Inquiry is the first book to introduce the application of Appreciative Inquiry (AI), an approach for organizational development and change, to the practice of evaluation. Authors Hallie Preskill and Tessie Tzavaras Catsambas lay out the theoretical foundation of AI and build a bridge between the theory and practice of applying AI to evaluation.
Key Features:
Provides a step-by-step guide: Written in a clear, accessible style, the text explains the way this particular approach has been used to frame, design, and conduct evaluations in various sectors worldwide.
Reflects specific real-world applications of AI to evaluation practice: Numerous U.S.-based and international case examples enhance readers' ability to see the nuances of applying AI to evaluation in a wide variety of international and multicultural, organizational, community, and population contexts.
Offers a whole-systems approach: This text provides a whole systems approach which enables evaluation to deal with complex and dynamically changing programs.
Intended Audience:
This book will appeal to a broad audience that includes evaluators, management and organization development consultants, program staff, and researchers in a wide variety of organizational and community settings. It is an ideal supplemental text for graduate courses that require students to practice evaluation.
Author Biography:
Hallie Preskill, PhD. is a Managing Director with FSG, a global nonprofit strategy, evaluation, and research consulting firm (since 2009), and leads the firm’s Strategic Learning and Evaluation practice. In her role as a senior advisor, she works on a wide variety of evaluation and learning projects. Sample clients include the Kresge Foundation, MasterCard Foundation, Knight Foundation, The California Endowment, Missouri Foundation for Health, Norlien Foundation, Packard Foundation, Northwest Area Foundation, Blue Shield of CA Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. She has helped evaluate a wide range of initiatives and programs related to community information needs, substance abuse, early learning, poverty, arts and culture, teacher professional development, domestic and sexual violence, economic development, youth and education, and healthcare.Â
Prior to joining FSG, Hallie spent more than 20 years in academia, teaching graduate level courses in program evaluation, training design and development, organizational learning, appreciative inquiry and consulting. Her research has focused on evaluation capacity building, transfer of learning/training, evaluation use, and evaluation as a catalyst for individual, team, and organizational learning. Hallie’s other books include: Reframing Evaluation through Appreciative Inquiry (2006, with T. Catsambas), Evaluation in Organizations: A Systematic Approach to Enhancing Learning, Performance & Change (2001, 2009, with D. Russ-Eft), Evaluation Strategies for Effective Strategies for Communicating and Reporting (2005, with R. T. Torres and M. Piontek), and Evaluative Inquiry for Learning in Organizations (1999, with R. T. Torres), and Becoming the Change: What One Organization Working To Transform Educational Systems Learned About Team Learning and Change (2011, with R. Babiera).
Hallie was the 2007 President of the American Evaluation Association. She received the American Evaluation Association′s Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Award for Outstanding Professional Practice in 2002 and the University of Illinois Distinguished Alumni Award in 2004. Hallie holds a PhD from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Anastasia (Tessie) Tzavaras Catsambas is the founder and CEO/CFO of EnCompass LLC, an organization of 250 staff that provides services in evaluation, learning, leadership, and organizational development. Ms. Catsambas brings 30 years’ experience in planning, evaluation, and organizational development. She has managed large-scale, international evaluations, delivered training in different aspects of evaluation, and advocated for evaluation at global level. She is an instructor for the EnCompass Learning Center teaching appreciative evaluation, evaluation management, and gender transformative evaluation. Ms. Catsambas is an innovator and practitioner in appreciative evaluation, a methodology that incorporates the systematic study of successful experiences in evaluation, and has co-authored a book entitled, Reframing Evaluation Through Appreciative Inquiry (Sage 2006).
Ms. Catsambas is a Past-President of the American Evaluation Association. She was a founding member of the EvalPartners Coalition, a global initiative to promote the use of evaluation to inform policy and program decisions and received the 2015 EvalPartners Award in recognition of her contributions. Ms. Catsambas holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Political Science from the College of Wooster in Ohio and a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Harvard University. She has trained with the late Dr. W. Edwards Deming in Total Quality Management. She is fluent in French and Greek and speaks Spanish.
