Antropologia kultury a ewaluacja edukacyjna

Abstract

The paper describes the connections between cultural anthropology and educational evaluation. It starts from the history of anthropologically oriented educational evaluation, when a qualitative-oriented approach emerged from a dominant, post-Tyleran tradition. It analyses connections between anthropological evaluation and anthropological paradigms, in particular the phenomenological one. The next section explores the notion of culture, a central category for ethnographic research, making anthropological evaluation distinctive from other research using a qualitative methodology. It presents the discussion about the notion of culture and the meaning of an inclusive approach to the research on school cultures. The third part describes distinctive features of anthropological evaluation, contrasted to the “traditional” anthropology. In the fourth part, conclusions from a postmodern critique of the linguistic turn are described: involvement in the power/knowledge relationships, an ontoepistemological status of collected data, fluidity and ambiguity of the evaluator’s roles. The next section covers probably the most obvious aspects of anthropological evaluation – the methodological implications. The last, sixth part presents challenges for doing evaluations in anthropological settings: keeping the integrity of the roles, reflecting on the biases, limitation in influence on change, “competition” with the postpositivist approach, and logistic difficulties.