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 I’ve recently been running workshops on purposeful program theory in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. It’s been a great treat to explore with so many different people how we might develop, represent and use program theory for policies and programs that have significant complicated or complex aspects It’s an issue I’ve Read the whole post –> Evaluation and complexity Wonderful interactive report on the recent ‘Show me the change’ conference in Melbourne on complexity, behavior change and evaluation. An open space conference such as this has magic moments of connection and creation. Documenting them through videos, notes, reflections and cartoons helps to capture the moment for participants and others.  So you’ve put out an RFP for an evaluation of a policy, program or initiative intended to serve and effect positive change in a “minority” community. All the proposals look terribly impressive, and they all include “cultural experts” on the evaluation team. How can you distinguish the proposals that show a clear understanding of what it takes to do effective and culturally responsive evaluations from those that merely pay ‘lip service’ to cultural competence? Read the whole post –> How to spot a ‘lip service’ approach to culturally responsive evaluation (a checklist for evaluation commissioners) If you can’t be in the Netherlands this week for the conference on complexity and evaluation, you can follow it through the conference blog Read the whole post –> Evaluation revisited – conference this week on complexity and evaluation  When a large and expensive evaluation fails to produce useful results, it’s worth seeing if at least it can be useful as a cautionary tale. Blueprint is a UK Government-funded drugs education programme consisting of five components: drug education in schools (for 11 and 12-year-olds – this was the main emphasis), drug education for parents, Read the whole post –> £6 million over 5 years – and STILL no genuine evaluation of Blueprint? Interesting conference in terms of content and processes in Melbourne May 4-6 at the Abbotsford Convent: Behaviour change and evaluation are both complex and fascinating fields. With an increasing awareness of the need to implement community-wide change towards a more sustainable society, there are numerous endeavours working to change people’s behaviours. But how do we know Read the whole post –> Show me the change – a conference on complexity and evaluating behaviour change Being able to learn from failure is an important part of Genuine Evaluation. A recent paper by Cannona and Edmondson explores technical and organizational barriers to doing this. Are there good examples of addressing these in monitoring systems or evaluation Read the whole post –> Learning from failure  As evaluators we all have to struggle, on the one hand, with having at least some sense of what evidence should constitute “good performance” (for a program, policy, or whatever we are evaluating) … but on the other hand, with being sufficiently open-minded about examples of good – perhaps outstanding – performance that we hadn’t imagined ahead of time and that clearly don’t fit with the program designer’s or funder’s plan. On that topic, this urban legend, plucked from mathematical finance academic Mark Joshi’s academic jokes page, “courtesy of Kevin Lim (15/01/04)”, tickled our funny bones and seemed an apt reflection for this week Read the whole post –> The Friday Funny: “Right Answers” **Revised and updated, March 4th** Here’s an elaborated version of the table presented in our earlier post that discussed the implicit reasons for creating evaluation teams with cultural (and other) ‘insiders’ in different proportions and in different roles. The table is presented in four columns: Read the whole post –> A fleshed out ‘program logic’ for why and where ‘insiders’ are included in evaluation  The concept of (invited) guest or gatecrasher was introduced by Judy Oakden as a way of framing her role, place and space in Maori focused evaluation as a non-Maori evaluator. In this post Nan Wehipeihana addresses several thought-provoking questions, including: Read the whole post –> Supporting evaluators in cross cultural contexts: Invited guests or gatecrashers? |
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