ERIC Number: EJ1394504
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023-Nov
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1389-2843
EISSN: EISSN-1573-1812
Docility and Dilemmas: Mapping 'Performative Evaluation' and Informal Learning
Journal of Educational Change, v24 n4 p1077-1098 Nov 2023
Educators working in museums, zoos, and botanic gardens are increasingly required to demonstrate impact. These requirements position 'performative evaluation' as the dominant model, one which also acts as a political, non-neutral, and managerial form of accountability. In contrast, 'practice evaluation' is intended to be democratic, dialogic, and developmental. To explore this contrast, Foucault's concept of the docile body is directed toward interviews with five educators from Italy, Portugal, and the United Kingdom who worked in museums, zoos or botanic gardens. In addition to their work mediating informal learning, all five also had responsibilities to provide evaluation reports to audiences including managers, trustees, funders, policy makers, and politicians. Analysis of these interviews identified a set of dilemmas that the participants faced--dilemmas which illustrate how performative evaluation becomes a disciplinary mechanism which produces docile bodies. I argue that such evaluation is not only inappropriate for the context of informal learning, but undemocratic and non-dialogic. The paper concludes that a reset of performative evaluation from an accountability technology, to a developmental one--along a more sophisticated reading of how informal learning is defined--would not only generate rich evaluate data but mitigate against educators being rendered docile by the process.
Descriptors: Informal Education, Museums, Recreational Facilities, Gardening, Foreign Countries, Program Evaluation, Accountability, Performance Based Assessment, Data Collection
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Italy; Portugal; United States
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A