La Evaluación Comprensiva de Programas Educativos: ¿Un Nuevo Paradigma Teórico?

Abstract

In the 100th anniversary of Max Weber's death, this paper explores the possibility of translating the principles of "Comprehensive Sociology" to the evaluation of educational programs. To this end, we firstly review the literature on the evaluation of educational programs and establish the relationship between the comprehensive evaluation approach and other approaches. In the second part, we develop the theoretical contribution of this work in terms of the construction of the evaluation object. In particular, special attention is dedicated to the understanding of educational programmes as social relations and the evaluation of programs based on the analysis of their logical coherence and its causal correspondence. In the third part, we define the limits to value judgments in the evaluation practice. In line with Weber, we argue that, while evaluators should not make value judgements, it does not mean that participants' value judgements cannot be evaluated. In fact, they are a central element in the evaluation approach that we present. Finally, the articulation of qualitative and quantitative techniques is proposed as the most appropriate methodological strategy given the theoretical prerogatives of comprehensive evaluation.