Women and Mathematics

Abstract

An evaluator always faces the problem that program planners are interested in information that will help them to imprové the program (formative evaluation), while program funders are interested in information that will help them to measure the impact of the program (summative evaluation). In the case of programs of the Math/Science Network that aim to increase women’s participation in mathematics, the complex origins of the under participation problem and the multifaceted nature of the programs combine to challenge the evaluator. Finally, the grass roots, volunteer character of many activities leads one to hesitate to spend large sums of money on data gathering when more people could be served if the same resources were allocated to staff or materials. Our resolution of this system of constraints is a flexible approach to evaluation that employs activities that provide formative and summative data, are targeted at specific and diverse goals, serve some programmatic use in addition to their assessment purpose, and are inexpensive. Examples from the evaluations of a variety of Network programs will illustrate these points and show that the planners and the funders can be equally satisfied. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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