Formative, Preformative, and Proformative Evaluation

Abstract

In this note, I would like to: (i) define more carefully the terms ‘preformative’ and ‘proformative’ that I have used in print from time to time;1 (ii) consider whether preformative is a sufficiently important role for, or type of, evaluation that it may be worth considering alongside the triad of formative, summative, and ascriptive; (iii) stress that good formative evaluation typically needs to include both a holistic evaluation and an analytic evaluation of the evaluand, a dualism that I will refer to as ‘the double-barreled nature of good formative evaluation;’ (iv) introduce proformative evaluation, of which whistleblowing is an example, to illustrate how one must sometimes cross the line between evaluation and implementation;’ (v) comment about evaluation taxonomies in general.