2.1 First generation of career professional evaluators

• Patton was among the first people to have a career fully focused on evaluation
• Began using evaluation during his education
• His first postdoctoral position was teaching & practicing evaluation ⊕While President, Patton added “Evaluation” as an option in AEA paperwork identifying your career
• He is still practicing, researching, and writing on evaluation today

2.2 A driver of evolution in evaluation

• He analyzed and shared his first years of work as
  • Utilization-focused Evaluation
  • still one of the most used frameworks in evaluation
• Which led to
  • Developmental Evaluation
• And then
  • Principles-focused Evaluation
• And most recently
  • Blue Marble Evaluation

2.3 He created impact, with people

• For Patton, evaluation is for improving the world
• And we make things happen by centering people

3.1 Doctoral education

• At U. Wisconsin, Madison
• Applied sociology, Sociology of Economic Development
• Evaluation as a research tool
• 100% quantitative, until … ⊕ Patton accepted his dissertation project hastily to be closer to his wife
  • his dissertation project - to his surprise - demanded 100% qualitative

3.2 First post-doc: Evaluation

• U. Minnesota implementing a large, federal grant
• Develop evaluation training
  • for special university fellows
  • and for community
  • spread evaluation throughout the Twin Cities & MN
• Immediately realized need for adapting to each program
  • size of program
  • nature of stakeholders
• Smaller, real-world programs frequently needed qualitative or mixed methods
• All programs needed good relationships

4.1 Bringing it all together

• He brought together that experience in his influential book
  • Utilization-focused Evaluation , 1978
  • today in its 4th edition

4.2 People first, impact first

• UFE puts people first
  • focusing on “intended use by intended users”
  • we must engage and satisfy those who can use the results
  • a report for its own sake does little
• UFE puts impact first
  • evaluations should serve a purpose
  • the results should lead to action
  • this goal of use must be first and foremost throughout the evaluation

4.3 Uplifting qualitative

• UFE uplifted qualitative work ⊕ Read about the quant.\(-\)qual. debate!
• The qualitative debate was at hand
• UFE was and is methods-agnostic
  • whatever leads to meaningful results is good
• With quantitative as the status quo
  • the direct acceptance of qualitative was empowering
• Some people equated UFE with requiring qualitative
  • a misunderstanding that shows it was such a big shift
  • Patton did find qualitative are valuable and often used and uses them

4.4 UFE was just the beginning

• UFE continues to be one of the most-used frameworks today
• Patton continued to refine and promote it
• But he didn’t stop innovating
• Tackling innovation head on became central to his next stop

5.1 Continuing to help new programs

• Patton’s focus on local, real world programs kept raising questions
• Smaller, newer programs perhaps needed the most help
• But they change direction frequently
  • shifting structures
  • shifting goals
  • shifting timelines
• How can we apply evaluation? What to evaluate?
• Outcome- and judgment-centered evaluators defined these as un-evaluable ⊕Patton elaborated the meaning of DE in a series of verbal and written encounters with Michael Scriven
• Patton was not deterred

5.2 Join the process

• Patton chose to let go of outcome-centered evaluation
• By working closely with committed stakeholders
  • he could provide ongoing process feedback
• By not pre-determining what to look for & find
  • he could work despite complexity
• With DE, Patton began new ways of analyzing complex systems
• Embracing systems views for structured work despite fluid program structures became a center of Patton’s work

5.3 Impact over results

• DE doesn’t include outcome measures, though it does measure
• It often might not even look for improvement
• Instead, it helps the program do the best at what it needs to do next, according to what the program says it needs
• The goal is not counting the results but making an impact

6.1 Theories of Change at the center

• Using concepts rather than specific outcomes created even more perspectives on evaluation
• PFE takes a further step back from isolated outcomes
• PFE asks whether or not the theory of change of a program is faithfully implemented
  • by looking if the principles behind it are being followed

6.2 Many real-world programs operate this way

• Programs, particularly working with people, often assume they way they work is foundational
• They articulate guiding principles that tie in to their theory of change
• They place complete trust in the value of implementing their principles
  • without checking that they are using the principles in the way they claim
• PFE is a framework that asks that first question -
  • are their principles being implemented in practice
• Then results can be connected to that first fact

6.3 This takes a big step into social justice

• By making principles a valid object of investigation
  • Patton makes program principles evaluable and progressive change measurable
• It elevates the work of groups of people who typically design with principles
  • including many who are of historically-marginalized cultures
• It likely, we would guess, also led Patton towards his most recent innovation …

7.1 Patton’s most recent new work

• Blue Marble is an applied philosophy of work that Patton is advancing today
  • relevant to any work, he of course particularly develops it around evaluation
• Blue Marble Evaluation addresses head-on the issue of our time -
  • our common global environmental crisis including the climate emergency

7.2 How it came about

• Patton’s extensive work in international evaluations came to a critical moment in 2015
  • with the UN “Year of Evaluation”
• Patton engaged in special national training efforts
  • and saw the need to extend that work into a deeper program
• In 2017 his new framework was used for the first time,
  • in an international evaluation on global food systems
• In 2019 he published the Blue Marble Evaluation book, and maintains a web site and association promoting the framework

7.3 Interconnectedness, environmental justice, and transformation

⊕

• In Blue Marble Evaluation, Patton observes that no one is outside of the thoroughly global crisis we face
• Further, striking inequality is one of the causes of the problem
  • and, left unchecked, those most marginalized historically will often be most impacted in the future
• On top of this, only transformational - large - changes that alter historically wealthy societies are going to solve the problem
  • This is particularly because of the urgency we are now left with

7.4 What does Blue Marble Evaluation mean?

• In Blue Marble Evaluation, Patton writes

Incorporating the Blue Marble Perspective means looking beyond nation-state boundaries and across sector and issue silos to connect the global and the local, connect the human and ecological, and connect evaluative thinking and methods with those trying to bring about global systems transformation

• BME is principles-centered
  4 overarching principles

  • Global Thinking principle
  • Anthropocene as Context principle
  • Transformative Engagement principle
  • Integration principle
  12 operating principles

  • Transboundary Engagement principle
  • GLOCAL principle
  • Cross-Silos principle
  • Time Being of the Essence principle
  • Yin-Yang principle
  • Bricolage Methods principle
  • World Savvy principle
  • Skin in the Game principle
  • Theory of Transformation principle
  • Transformation Fidelity principle
  • Transformational Alignment principle
  • Evaluation as Intervention principle
• BME means adding questions about sustainability and environmental justice to every project
  • however big or small
  • no matter whether or not the program seems environmental
    • it’s all hands on deck