Reverse Evaluation to Enhance Strategies (REVES): Place-based evaluation of central policies

Evaluation ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Tagle ◽  
Serafino Celano
Keyword(s):  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Local Perspective

Policies increasingly involve local actors, yet evaluations are mainly commissioned by central agencies, responding to their needs and values. Evaluating central policies from a local perspective requires a framework to assess the outcomes of mutually interacting policies and to rethink evaluation tasks such as identifying the object of evaluation, explicating values, and assessing causal or contribution hypotheses. REVES provides such a framework by working with trustworthy local partners and adopting their viewpoint as a guiding principle.

A Donor Influenced by Local Dynamics

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Setsuko Matsuzawa
Keyword(s):  
Poverty Alleviation ◽  
Rural Poverty ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Local Dynamics ◽  
Grant Program ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Research Interviews ◽  
National Model ◽  
Management Project ◽  
Development Discourses

This article explores the relations between a foreign aid donor and local actors in the context of the dissemination of development discourses and practices in an authoritarian context. It addresses the question “To what extent may the local dynamics alter the original goals of a donor and lead to unintended consequences?” Based on archival research, interviews, and secondary literature, this case study examines the Yunnan Uplands Management Project (YUM) in 1990–95, the Ford Foundation's first grant program on rural poverty alleviation in China. While the Foundation did not attain its main goal of making YUM a national model for poverty alleviation, the local actors were able to use YUM to develop individual capacities and to build roles for themselves as development actors in the form of associations and nongovernmental organizations, resulting in further support from the Foundation. The study contributes to our understanding of donor-local actor dynamics by highlighting the gaps between the original goals of a donor and the perspectives and motivations of local actors. The study suggests that local dynamics may influence the goals of donors and the ways they seek to disseminate development discourses and practices to local actors, despite the common conception of donors as hegemonic or culturally imperialistic.

Preliminary Report on the Research of “Activity Centers” in Taidong, Taiwan

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-125
Author(s):  
Petr Janda
Keyword(s):  
Preliminary Report ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Aboriginal Communities ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
Suitable Location

This report presents current research on aboriginal activity centers in Taidong County, Taiwan, primarily in the townships of Chishang and Yanping with over 30% of the population being of aboriginal ancestry. Taidong County is the region with the most distinctive aboriginal communities in Taiwan. The research attempts to identify the actors behind the operation of such centers and their significance for aboriginal communities. The research investigates the process of selecting suitable location for the facilities, the specific features of such centers, the potential religious significance of the locations including the role of traditional beliefs in predominantly Christian aboriginal communities, the symbolic value of structures built in the traditional style for construction of ethnicity and financing that enables the construction of the facilities and the organization of the festivities held in them. The principle research method used was interviews with local actors including local representatives, organizers of festivities, as well as members of local communities. The research began in 2017.

Preface to the special issue, CMAM 2011, no. 3.

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 272
Author(s):  
Ivan Gavrilyuk ◽  
Boris Khoromskij ◽  
Eugene Tyrtyshnikov
Keyword(s):  
Separation Of Variables ◽  
Numerical Algorithms ◽  
Multilevel Methods ◽  
High Dimensional ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
High Dimensions ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Tensor Methods ◽  
Closed World ◽  
The One

Abstract In the recent years, multidimensional numerical simulations with tensor-structured data formats have been recognized as the basic concept for breaking the "curse of dimensionality". Modern applications of tensor methods include the challenging high-dimensional problems of material sciences, bio-science, stochastic modeling, signal processing, machine learning, and data mining, financial mathematics, etc. The guiding principle of the tensor methods is an approximation of multivariate functions and operators with some separation of variables to keep the computational process in a low parametric tensor-structured manifold. Tensors structures had been wildly used as models of data and discussed in the contexts of differential geometry, mechanics, algebraic geometry, data analysis etc. before tensor methods recently have penetrated into numerical computations. On the one hand, the existing tensor representation formats remained to be of a limited use in many high-dimensional problems because of lack of sufficiently reliable and fast software. On the other hand, for moderate dimensional problems (e.g. in "ab-initio" quantum chemistry) as well as for selected model problems of very high dimensions, the application of traditional canonical and Tucker formats in combination with the ideas of multilevel methods has led to the new efficient algorithms. The recent progress in tensor numerical methods is achieved with new representation formats now known as "tensor-train representations" and "hierarchical Tucker representations". Note that the formats themselves could have been picked up earlier in the literature on the modeling of quantum systems. Until 2009 they lived in a closed world of those quantum theory publications and never trespassed the territory of numerical analysis. The tremendous progress during the very recent years shows the new tensor tools in various applications and in the development of these tools and study of their approximation and algebraic properties. This special issue treats tensors as a base for efficient numerical algorithms in various modern applications and with special emphases on the new representation formats.

Restoring Damaged Relationships Through the Art of Invitation: Application with Addicted Incarcerated Women

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katti J. Sneed ◽  
Debbie Teike
Keyword(s):  
Human Services ◽  
Addiction Treatment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Incarcerated Women ◽  
Relationship Building ◽  
Health And Human Services ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Department Of Health ◽  
Complementary Approach

This article presents a description of Art of Invitation as a complementary approach to traditional addiction treatment through the alignment of Art of Invitation (AOI) with Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Ten Guiding Principles for Recovery.  AOI is a faith based relationship building approach that combines key Judeo/Christian teachings with relationship building tools, skills, and concepts for those seeking to build and restore relationships.  SAMHSA, as the leading agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, spearheads public health efforts to advance behavioral health within the United States.  Each Guiding Principle is presented along with a description of how AOI is shared with incarcerated women, an often neglected population, participating in an inpatient treatment program housed in a community corrections facility.

Palestine-Israel and the Neoliberal Ideal

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Luke Mathew Peterson
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Territorial Dispute ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Clash Of Cultures ◽  
Social Upheaval

The following study envisions the modern history of the Palestinian- Israeli conflict through the application of previously underutilized theoretical frames. Beginning with the unprecedented political and social upheaval wrought upon the Middle East after the end of World War I, the article unfolds in three distinct sections. The first section provides an historical introduction to the global, transnational forces that guided the developing infrastructure of political conflict within the region. The second section articulates the ideological parameters of the international political and economic forces (“neoliberalism”) that connect the past and present of political conflict in the region as well as the local (state and non-state) and non-local actors involved in its contemporary manifestation. The third and final section reconceptualizes the Palestinian-Israeli conflict not exclusively as a territorial dispute or as a nebulous clash of cultures, but rather as a deliberate, operational casualty enduring in the service of an aggressive, transnational, and indeed historical force whose trajectory spans the length of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: neoliberalism. In each sphere in which the neoliberal ideal has been applied – one, an historical fait accompli, another, a contemporary situation en cours – an important, connective element persists: the distinctly non-local origin of both the historical forces and the contemporary economic manifestations under examination.

Educational Digital Media Tools to Reformulate Activity and Object in Indigenous Science and Environmental Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 127-134
Author(s):  
Reynaldo Morales Cardenas
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Informal Education ◽  
Community Education ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Learning Programs ◽  
Local Actors

This paper examines the functioning of and underlying assumptions about digital media in collaborative curriculum design processes in public science and environmental education, and community-designed action research learning programs. The article discusses teaching practices in US rural Northeast Wisconsin among Native Youth learning processes, from the complementation and articulation of formal and informal education to meaningful engagement and participation in science. The focus on the transformative use of digital media in science community education is intended to serve two interrelated purposes: First, it helps to address cultural-historical relations around the production of knowledge and relevant curriculums and pedagogies for rural tribal youth. Second, it intersects with the opportunities for the transferability of activity systems and action research centered around the production of mediational artifacts designed for the collective negotiation between First Nations Tribal communities and western modeled schools, institutions, workplaces, and societal roles. The transferability of this model envisions the incorporation of local actors and institutions in a deep artifact-based dialogue around epistemologies of self-determination and sustainability for Peoples who are fighting for their survival. These propositions take a new level when the transformative power of digital media shifts representations of power in historically marginalized communities, serving a larger activity of reorganizing ecologies of learning in education for culturally distinctive communities of practice.

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