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The Limits of Constructivism in Evaluation

Centre for Applied Research in Education University of East Anglia

If evaluators do not borrow from the natural and social sciences for their methods, what do their enquiries look like? Many who seek to answer that question pursue naturalistic or case study or qualitative approaches, conceived of as a reaction to scientism to produce a more faithful response to the social and political nature of the world being evaluated. Among those approaches is constructivism, familiar in the philosophy of science, science education and psychology. This is a general critique of science for its failure to acknowledge that theories and realities are not 'out there' waiting to be discovered or uncovered, but are constructed in the minds of individuals or in the discourses of groups. This article looks critically at constructivism as it has appeared in the field of evaluation and presents it as an overreaction to the problems of objective reality.

Evaluation, Vol. 2, No. 2, 189-200 (1996)
DOI: 10.1177/135638909600200205


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