Constructionism in the rhetoric and practice of fourth generation evaluation

Abstract

In Fourth Generation Evaluation Egon Guba and Yvonna Lincoln espouse a monist, cognitive rhetoric of relativism and subjectivism but practice a form of evaluation that takes a dualist social stance towards “observation data” and a quasi-monist/dualist stance towards “linguistic data.” Their conceptualization of evaluands, the objects of evaluation inquiries, is fully dualist. I argue that the appropriate metaphysic and methodology for constructionist studies in evaluation is, and must be, social dualist. Relativist and subjectivist rhetoric is not useful, but consensual methodology of evaluation proposed by Guba and Lincoln is useful.