Nu finns Ray Pawsons uppskattade föredrag från konferensen 2017 på youtube. Klicka här.
Maria Bergströms inledning:
The plenary is based on the VICTORE model of programme complexity introduced in Pawson (2013). The acronym represents seven key dimensions (Volitions, Implementation, Contexts, Time, Outcomes, Rivalry, and Emergence) which undermine the consistent application of social interventions. The presentation then goes onto compare two models of evaluation research in respect of their ability to understand and control these dynamic processes. Social programmes are complex, self-transforming systems thrust into complex, self-transforming systems. The result is that we can never hope to ‘reproduce’ a programme. Even if they carry the ‘same’ name and the ‘same’ ambition, the ‘same’ intervention will always be coloured by differences in implementation and context.
Social programmes are the brain-children of ambitious policy-makers, management generalists, and freshlyappointed practitioners. This generates policy amnesia these folks don’t look backwards; their job is to improvise, fix, trouble-shoot and keep-the-show-on-the-road.
The end result is a kaleidoscope of programmes met by a huge palate of evaluation techniques. How can evaluation research learn and cumulate against this background? Are we doomed to produce an endless descriptive catalogue – a million tales of million programmes?
There is a connecting thread amongst this mayhem. Programmes are always different but the programme theories underlying them are remarkably similar (some might say profoundly unimaginative). These theories succeed and fail in their different collisions with reality. The task for evaluation is to build ‘programme theory repositories’ to guide us in shaping the next encounter.
Ray Pawson is professor of Social Research Methodology in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. Pawson’s main interest lies in research methodology. He has written widely on the philosophy and practice of research, covering methods qualitative and quantitative, pure and applied, contemporaneous and historical. He is the author of ’Realist Synthesis’, a new approach of literature review that, in the last years, has widely influenced systematic review practices of complex programmes and policies all over the world.
