The Passing of Michael Scriven

We are sad to hear of the death of Michael Scriven. Scriven was born in the UK and spent much of his life in Australia and the US. As a renowned academic holding professorships across continents, Scriven made significant contributions to the field of evaluation over his lifetime.

He authored many scholarly articles and books which underpin the direction of evaluative practice as we understand it and which resonate today. He was a major voice in shifting evaluation from narrow based ‘goal achievement’ evaluation to ‘goal free’ evaluation. He was President of the American Educational Research Association and The American Evaluation Association and, latterly Distinguished Professor at Claremont Graduate University, California.

See tribute from Michael Quinn Patton, author and international practitioner of evaluation:

https://youtu.be/1MpLHuF20I0?si=Pn9ip1yhUJh4spFB

To mention just two of his many publications:

• Hard won lessons in programme evaluation  (1983, Jossey-Bass)
• Reforming the Evaluation of Research: New Directions for Evaluation, Number 118 Jossey-Bass