Best practice and lessons learned

Leading evaluation thinker Michael Quinn Patton has strong opinions on the terms ‘best practice’ and ’lessons learned’. In an article from 2001, he argued:

In the endlessly hyped knowledge age of the new millennium, evaluators are being asked to generate lessons learned and best practices … The demand for knowledge acquisition, which demonstrates membership in the elite ranks of learning organizations, has crescendoed into an organizational development and program evaluation mania. But just what is popularly meant by a best by a best practice*? What does it mean to* learn a lesson*? And what’s evaluation’s role in all this?*

(emphasis in original. Patton, 2001: Evaluation, knowledge management, best practices, and high quality lessons learned,
in American Journal of Evaluation, 22:3, pp. 329-336.)

Patton added that: ‘The emphasis on knowledge generation disseminated in the form of best practices has swept like wildfire through all sectors of society’, although, as he explained:

I’ve looked at a lot of lists of ’lessons learned’ and ‘best practices’ and I haven’t found anything that systematically differentiates one from the other in terms of content or empirical support. Those of more modest inclination seem to favor ’lessons learned’ which connotes, at least to me, a more personal and local form of insight. Those with more chutzpah (though not necessarily, as far as I can tell, more evidence) prefer the more generalized and harder-hitting (connotatively) assertion of having discovered a ‘best practice.’ Seldom do such statements identify for whom the practice is best, under what conditions it is best, or what values or assumptions undergird its best-ness. (emphasis added).

His last sentence, above, links clearly to this course’s cross-cutting themes of equity, participation, and accountability.