ABSTRACT

Empowerment evaluation is a form of self-evaluation designed to help people accomplish their objectives through cycles of reflection and action. This approach values both processes and outcomes. It is used to enable people to establish their own goals, baselines, and benchmarks. It is well suited to accreditation self-studies, as it is designed to engage people and foster participation and collaboration in the process of conducting an evaluation. It is based on the assumption that the more closely stakeholders are engaged in interpreting and reflecting on evaluation findings in a collaborative and collegial setting, the more likely they are to take ownership of the results. Two accreditation self-study examples from opposite ends of the academic spectrum, the California Institute of Integral Studies and Stanford University’s School of Medicine, will be presented to highlight the capacity of this approach to help people create their own learning organizations (Argyris, 1999; Senge, 1990).