The Garden of Evaluation Approaches: A Must-Read for Every Evaluator

One of the most exciting things about working in evaluation is that the field never stands still. New approaches emerge, existing ones evolve, and our collective understanding of what good evaluation looks like continues to deepen. But let's be honest, that same dynamism can also feel overwhelming. Whether you are just entering the field or have spent years navigating it, there are moments when the sheer number of evaluation approaches, methodologies, and frameworks can be overwhelming. When do you use which approach? What does each one prioritize? And how do you know when to combine them? These are not trivial questions, and for many evaluators, new and seasoned alike, they remain genuinely hard to answer.

That's precisely why I appreciate this paper and recommend that every evaluator read it. 'The Garden of Evaluation Approaches,' by Bianca Montrosse-Moorhead, Daniela Schröter, and L. W. Becho, offers a valuable and insightful contribution to the field. Using the elegant metaphor of a garden (with flowers and petals), the authors organize the most important evaluation approaches in a way that is easy to navigate, easy to remember, and surprisingly beautiful in its simplicity. Rather than prescribing a single 'right' way to evaluate, the paper invites practitioners to see approaches as tools to think with — flexible instruments that can be layered, adapted, and combined as needed to meet the demands of a particular evaluation. For those of us who have long since moved beyond mechanically following one approach prototype, this framing feels like a welcome validation and reassurance of our professional judgment.

The authors surface several points that I have quietly wrestled with over the years, articulating them with a clarity I honestly wish I had found sooner. The paper maps six evaluation approaches, each represented as a distinct flower in the garden:

1. Theory-Driven Evaluation
2. Practical Participatory Evaluation
3. Made in Africa
4. Nation-to-Nation Evaluation
5. Sistematización De Experiencias
6. Transformative Participatory Evaluation
7. Fourth Generation Evaluation

Each flower has eight petals, describing the approach's treatment of: Values; Valuing; Activism for Social Justice; Context; Promoting Use; Engagement in the Evaluation Process; Depth of Engagement; and Power Dynamics in Making Evaluation Decisions.

I will resist the temptation to walk you through every insight and highlight here because part of the joy of this paper is discovering those moments yourself. The link is below, so please read it in your spare time.

Perhaps the most resonant section is the authors' articulation of who the garden is built for and what it hopes to make possible. In their words:

The garden of evaluation approaches was built with several users and intended uses in mind. Primarily, it is intended for use by evaluation practitioners. We believe the garden will provide a way for practitioners to engage in reflection and dialogue about which approaches to use for the settings in which their evaluation work is occurring, to be aware of what they might miss by opting for one choice over another, and to think about where, why, and how to combine approaches. We also believe practitioners can use it to create (a) their own flower based on how they prefer to practice and (b) the flower that is possible or preferred within a given evaluation setting.

This is precisely what drives the work at ASDE Global. We are committed to nurturing conversations that help practitioners across the regions where we work develop approaches that truly reflect the communities and contexts in which they work, with our own flowers, rooted in our own soil. We look forward to continuing to collaborate across the evaluation ecosystem, building on the exceptional thinking of scholars like Montrosse-Moorhead, Schröter, and Becho, and ensuring that the evaluations we conduct are not only rigorous but genuinely responsive to the people and places that matter most.