{"id":23323,"date":"2024-06-15T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-15T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cehhs.utk.edu\/elps\/?p=23323"},"modified":"2024-05-17T11:06:18","modified_gmt":"2024-05-17T15:06:18","slug":"to-evaluate-or-to-be-evaluated-that-is-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cehhs.utk.edu\/elps\/to-evaluate-or-to-be-evaluated-that-is-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"To Evaluate, or to Be Evaluated? That is the Question."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By M. Andrew Young<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hello! My name is M. Andrew Young. I\u2019m a second-year Ph.D. student in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Evaluation, Statistics, and Methodology (ESM) program in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (ELPS) department. In addition to my educational journey here at the University of Tennessee, I am also a higher education assessment director at East Tennessee State University in their College of Pharmacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Evaluation practices are becoming increasingly utilized across many industries. The American Evaluation Association (AEA) lists general industries on its careers page (Consulting, Education\/Teaching\/Administration, Government\/Civil Service, Healthcare\/Health Services, Non-profit\/Charity, Other) (Evaluation Jobs – American Evaluation Association<\/em>, n.d.). A quick Google search also indicates numerous other business-related evaluation opportunities (What Industries Employ Evaluators – Google Search<\/em>, 2024).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do I bother stating the obvious? Evaluation is everywhere!<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simple. As an emerging evaluator (this is a whole different discussion, but in short, I\u2019m newer to the field, so I\u2019m \u201cemerging\u201d), it is important to critically reflect upon what it means to be an evaluator as a professional identity. Medical doctors have \u201cM.D.\u201d or \u201cD.O.\u201d degrees, and after an initial licensing process, they have an ongoing licensure examination as well as continuing education and conduct requirements (FSMB | About Physician Licensure<\/em>, 2024). Physical Engineers have similar requirements such as an initial licensure requirement and continuing education (Maintaining a License<\/em>, 2024). Pharmacists also have to pass licensure examinations (one national exam, the NAPLEX, and one state-specific exam, the MPJE) and also have continuing education requirements (Pharmacist Licensing Requirements & Service | Harbor Compliance | www.Harborcompliance.Com<\/em>, 2024). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do they do this? Education helps, experience helps, but why do these few aforementioned professions require licensure and continuing education as part of their right to practice their profession?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professional identity is an important function of entrustment given to a profession, and I pose the question: Can licensure with a continuing education requirement support that trust given to evaluators? It may be time to consider to what extent credentialing would support entrustment by those affected by or participating in evaluation activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the \u201cearly days” of the AEA in the 1990\u2019s, the subject of credentialing was broached, and there was such sharp dissent about how to handle this, that AEA pushed back addressing that until their formed their AEA Competency Task Force. In 2015, \u201cThe Task Force believed that without AEA agreement about what <\/em>competencies were essential, it was premature to decide how <\/em>these competencies would be measured and monitored. Efforts such as the viability and value of adopting a credentialing or assessment system can be the task of working groups that follow ours\u201d (Tucker et al., 2020). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

AEA is in good company without a licensure or credentialing requirement as they follow the example of other major evaluation societies that do not also require or offer credentialing (to my knowledge, only the CES and JES offer this at this point in time) (Altschuld, 1999; Ayoo et al., 2020; Tucker et al., 2020). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does it mean to me?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a rather pragmatic sense, a credentialing requirement would add a barrier to entry that would protect the economy of evaluation. A continuing education requirement would help make sure that practitioners in evaluation are also keeping current, and a conduct policy would help ensure ethical practice of evaluation. All-in-all, it would hopefully maintain the quality of the profession. While I have not explored how pervasive \u201cbad\u201d evaluation practice is, the more people doing evaluation as it continues to grow as a practice could open the doors for inexperienced and unknowledgeable evaluators to practice. \u201cWhat about people who are doing some evaluation work for employers but aren\u2019t a \u2018professional\u2019 evaluator?\u201d <\/em>you may ask. Good question. I\u2019ll answer: people who do evaluation work as a part of their private employment would not be required to be licensed or credentialed, but having a license or credential might give them leverage to advance their careers and get compensated commensurate with their abilities. One does not have to be licensed in a software language to use it in the context of employment, but a person with a credential (usually in the form of a certificate embedded in a degree program) in software languages can ask for more compensation because they have demonstrated competence and thereby their employer can give entrustment to them to perform the tasks they will be asked to complete. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Credentialing has been touted to do much more to the profession than what I listed above, and for that, here is a cool resource to read on this:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n