Hello! We’re Katie Winters and Beverly Parsons. We are two systems-oriented evaluators with a cumulative 60+ years of evaluation experience spanning education, public health, and environmental sustainability.
Evaluation’s orthodoxies are grounded in empiricism. That which can be perceived with the 5 senses is deemed legitimate in the dominant western worldview. If you can see, smell, hear, taste, or touch it, then it’s “real” and worthy of consideration.
But what about intuition? The message from your gut, or for some, a spiritual experience, that arises from within, lands in the awareness, and cannot be linked to anything concrete in the physical world?
Here’s an example of intuition’s role in this work. At the AEA conference in Portland, we delivered a workshop about rebalancing the machine-based and ecology-based paradigms to address today’s poly-crises. A key idea is the need to name and elucidate the eco-relational system sciences in order to rebalance the relationship between humans and nature. These include, for example, Indigenous and Eastern cultures, sciences, and philosophies that emphasize body-mind-spirit integration and the feminist notion of partnership over dominance. Notably, these orientations acknowledge awareness beyond the 5 senses.
On the day of our workshop, two things happened.
- The majority of the participants were GEDI scholars – graduate students of color who are committed to culturally responsive evaluation practice. They were already more familiar with Indigenous, critical, and feminist theories than many AEA members.
- Hazel Symonette was in attendance. She is a leader in the evaluation field, played a significant role in getting the GEDI program started, and is well-known among the GEDI scholars.
This resulted in a space for intergenerational knowledge transfer between two elders in the field – Hazel and Beverly – and an audience of emerging scholars who are poised to incorporate their ideas into new scholarship. It’s our belief that something beyond the 5 senses was at play. We felt the influence of a greater intelligence through intuitive perception we’ve cultivated and learned to trust over time. Hazel affirmed this when she shared that it was a spiritual intuitive knowing that led her to sign up for our workshop.
We believe intuitive awareness can provide a bridge between mechanistic and eco-relational paradigms that enables change makers, including evaluators, to rebalance them. While excluded from the dominant mechanistic paradigm that grounds much of evaluation, intuitive awareness is of equal (or even greater) importance than other sources of information in many non-dominant world views. The knowing that surfaces from intuition can serve as the very essence from which one does evaluation.
Rad Resources:
- This 10-minute video explains a holistic and systemic worldview that is reflected in wisdom traditions worldwide and is inclusive of intuitive knowing.
- Cultivating Self as responsive Instrument (Symonette, 2009)
The American Evaluation Association is hosting this week with our colleagues in the Systems in Evaluation Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from SETIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.
What does it mean when your intuition is wrong?