Interrogare la valutazione nelle discipline umanistiche

In line with the democratic ideals, there is a growing call for a greater public involvement in the establishment of science and technology policies. There exists a variety of public participation procedures that aim at consulting and engaging the public, ranging from public hearings to consensus conferences. Unfortunately, a general lack of empirical consideration of the quality of these methods arises from confusion regarding the appropriate benchmarks to evaluate the humanities. Given the difficulty in determining the quality of the output of any participatory exercise, the author suggests the need to consider which aspects of the process are desirable and then measure the presence or quality of these aspects. To this end, a number of theoretical evaluation criteria that are essential for effective public participation are specified. First of all is the need to explore the potential resources of a theory of dialogism and its core concepts for the development of a philosophy and methodology of the humanities. Future research needs to develop instruments to measure these criteria more precisely and identify the contextual and environmental factors that will mediate the effectiveness of the different participatory methods.