Abstract
The author uses her experience as an evaluator for a literacy professional development programme with urban elementary schools in the United States to illustrate failures and successes with negotiating values and value judgements. Values are defined here as ‘the basis of criteria that inform the judgement of merit, worth, or significance of a program’, and value judgements are an assertion regarding the merit, worth or significance of the programme based on a process of weighing the evidence in relation to the value criteria. In the example, the author worked from what Schwandt called a ‘descriptive view of valuing’, to describe the views and experiences of the programme from a variety of perspectives in an effort to guide stakeholders in making value judgements about the programme. The evaluator refrained from being the sole authority that made value judgements and did not assume that prescriptive criteria could be reached among stakeholders. The author offers her reflections on the process as well as discussion questions for readers.
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