Advancing Causal Pluralism in Educational Evaluation

• In Event: 52.076 - Effects of Design and Methods in Evaluating Policies and Programs

Abstract

Researchers and evaluators need to make causal claims when assessing the outcomes of educational policies and programs. Current debates on causality center on appropriate methodology and advance one dominant view of causality. In this paper, we promote causal pluralism, which contends that there are multiple ways of viewing and approaching causality. We discuss four different views on causality (i.e. narrative, generative, causal package, and complex systems) and illustrate how each view underlies a particular causal approach (i.e. Success Case Method, Realist Evaluation, Qualitative Comparative Analysis, and System Dynamics Modeling). By espousing causal pluralism, evaluators can work towards social justice by ensuring educational evaluations honor a diversity of ways of knowing related to the outcomes of policies and programs.

Authors

• Lisa Dyson, University of Auckland

• Emily Gates, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign