See AEA's Mission, Vision, Values 

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From Mel Mark, Evaluation Policy Task Force Member

 

AEA's Evaluation Policy Task Force (EPTF) currently focuses on evaluation policy at the United States Federal level. This focus was specified in the initial charge from AEA's Board, which stated, "At least initially, it would be desirable to focus this Task Force on the Federal level because evaluation policy decisions at that level have broad implications for many AEA members and for the field generally." The thinking was that some restriction on the Task Force's focus was necessary given limited resources. The Board's charge continued, "It may be possible in the future to expand this effort to other arenas (nonprofits, state-governments, businesses, international, etc.), but we expect that initially at least the effort will be focused on Federal policy."

 

Past PolicyWatch columns, along with reports available on the AEA website (see the EPTF Evaluation Briefing Book), summarize many of the activities and apparent successes of the EPTF. In this column, I want to note that members of the EPTF, acting independently as members of the evaluation community, have expanded beyond the group's formal efforts.

 

In particular, Eleanor Chelimsky and I have been invited to participate with others on an "expert panel" to advise the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank as it formalizes an evaluation policy. This effort builds on various existing policies and practices, and also involves Patrick Grasso, a member of the EPTF who is a consultant to the World Bank. Because this work is in its early stages, there currently is little to share in terms of the nature of the policy or even of the process involved. What is noteworthy at this point is that members of the EPTF, as individuals, are engaged in the development of an explicit evaluation policy in a sector beyond EPTF's current, U.S. Federal focus. Also noteworthy is that, not surprisingly, AEA's EPTF does not need to be involved for evaluation policy to be established!

 

The latter point is important. Many of the people reading this column are in positions that would allow them to advocate for and contribute to the development of explicit evaluation policies in the settings in which they work. In places where explicit evaluation policies already exist, periodic review and revision are probably needed. The reference to explicit evaluation policy matters, in that many organizations have portions of an implicit evaluation policy, reflected for instance in routines about when and how evaluation is done. Developing an explicit evaluation policy is likely to bring benefits, however.

 

For those interested in contributing to the development or review of evaluation policy relevant to the settings in which you work, you may want to begin by reviewing the Evaluation Roadmap prepared by the EPTF and approved by AEA's Board and membership. New Directions for Evaluation, no. 123, may also be of interest. A web search for "evaluation policy" will reveal examples and guidances, many from an international development context, such as the United Nation's "Guidance to Programmes for Developing an Evaluation Policy."

 

 Go to the Evaluation Policy Task Force Page

From Karen Anderson, AEA's Diversity Coordinator Intern

 

The Graduate Education Diversity Internship (GEDI) Program is designed to bring graduate students from underrepresented communities into the field of evaluation. During the GEDI experience, interns attend the AEA Annual Conference, the AEA/CDC Summer Institute, and visit prominent organizations around the country that are doing outstanding work in the field of evaluation. Peer support is encouraged and professional mentoring is provided during the nine-month internship. GEDIs also participate in various workshops throughout the year while also gaining hands-on experience in evaluation at their placement sites. 

 

I had the pleasure of attending the 2012 GEDI graduation at the AEA/CDC Summer Institute held in Atlanta, GA earlier this month, and I was very impressed with the intern projects, site visits, and training opportunities with experts in the field of evaluation. This was a high energy, fun bunch. GEDI: The Next Generation Mind, Body, and Soul, the 2012 cohort's name, even selected nicknames for their program leaders!

 

"As a result of being a part of the GEDI 2012 cohort," says cohort member Courtney Tucker, "I no longer see evaluation as a simplistic tool to gain information and determine achievement, but as a complex field that can drive policy decisions and empower communities, particularly those disproportionately affected by societal ills. I look forward to my new journey as a scientist, educator, and EVALUATOR with much excitement and anticipation."

 

The GEDI Program was chaired by Katrina Bledsoe, past AEA board member, and Senior Evaluation Specialist/Research Scientist at the Education Development Center, and Stewart Donaldson, current AEA board member and Dean of the School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences at Claremont Graduate University. John LaVelle, Ph.D. candidate and Director of External Affairs in the School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences, at Claremont Graduate University supported the GEDIs as the program liaison.

 

"This year working with the GEDI has been very rewarding, and it's exciting that so many of them are continuing to work in an evaluation context. I am really looking forward to meeting the next cohort of GEDIs, and hope that they can see all the different ways evaluation can make a difference," noted LaVelle.

 

In her closing remarks at the graduation, GEDI Program Co-Chair Katrina Bledsoe stated: "I am so proud and impressed - beyond impressed - with the GEDI cohort, to see their change and development as professional evaluators."

 

Congrats to AEA's 2012 AEA GEDI Program Graduates!

 

Tyra Good, Duquesne University; Educational Leadership Doctoral Program

Center for Education Technologies

  

Elaine Lo, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Master of Public Health Program

Evalaution Assessment and Policy Connections (EvAP)

 

Laura Pryor, University of California, Los Angeles, Master of Urban and Regional Planning Program

Evaluation, Management and Training, Associates (EMT)

 

Whitney Rouse, East Carolina University, Master of Public Administration Program

Evaluation Assessment and Policy Connections (EvAP)

 

Rudolph Spencer III, University of Michigan, Master of Social Work Program

Public Policy Associates

 

Nichole Stewart, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Public Policy Doctoral Program

Annie E. Casey Foundation

 

Courtney Tucker, Emory University, Educational Psychology Doctoral Program

ICF International

 

Go to the GEDI Web Page

AEA and friends are excited to host a four-part series of Coffee Break Webinars in July that focuses on international monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and is open to the public. The workshops are the result of a unique collaboration among four series partners - Catholic Relief Services (CRS), American Red Cross/Red Crescent, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and AEA's International and Cross Cultural Evaluation (ICCE) Topical Interest Group - and started because of a post over two years ago to AEA's daily blog. Each session is short and informative - 20 minutes in length with training on a specific M&E topic, as well as resource sharing from the facilitators, and a chat-based question and answer.

 

Chaplowe

"In April 2010, the International Federation of Red Cross' (IFRC) Scott Chaplowe posted to aea365, AEA's Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators, about a set of field-friendly M&E training and capacity building guides and short cut ready reference tools from CRS," notes AEA's Executive Director Susan Kistler. "Scott was a contributing author and both he and series editor, CRS's Guy Sharrock were (and are!) longtime members of AEA. The post was immensely popular and I used it regularly for reference when colleagues would ask about M&E resources. This past winter, I reached out to Scott and Guy about possibly expanding on these resources to conduct M&E mini-trainings via AEA's Coffee Break Webinar series that would highlight the concepts in the guides, as well as go beyond to add new content. They signed on, helped to recruit other facilitators, and secured agreement from CRS, USAID, and American Red Cross, to sponsor and to help promote the series, along with our own International and Cross-Cultural Topical Interest Group.

 

"I initially posted the field-friendly M&E guides to aea365," says Chaplowe, a senior M&E officer at IFRC, "because I felt their underlying purpose dovetailed well with that of aea365, practical M&E guidance informed from real-world experience of practicing M&E professionals. When Susan later approached me with the idea of expanding the modules into webinars, it seemed like a great way to widen the outreach of the M&E guides and their potential contribution to the practice of M&E."

 

Sharrock agrees. "It provides a chance to make a wider audience aware of some of the resources that CRS and American Red Cross developed together to support better M&E. The intent was to focus on areas that are not often covered in the literature, so the presentations on evaluation are less about design and data collection, but more about the nuts-and-bolts of how to prepare for, and later manage an evaluation." Another bonus? "I hope that out of the workshop we make some connections too!"

 

Go to AEA's Coffee Break Web Page

Join us in congratulating three Topical Interest Groups that have created not only a website presence but a Facebook page as well. They include:

• The Collaborative, Participatory, and Empowerment (CPE) TIG
• The Independent Consulting (IC) TIG
• The Social Work (SW) TIG

"Facebook was fast becoming a place for people to connect, especially professionally," explains Cindy Banyai, "and the CPE TIG was very open to the use of novel technologies so I proposed we launch a page during the business meeting in November 2010. Given the success that we had connecting and sharing information, I then proposed the launch of another page for the IC TIG during the 2011 business meeting. Several emails, a webinar and a TIG newsletter article later, that official launch was in May 2012."

 

The Social Work TIG, meanwhile, has both a Facebook presence and a LinkedIn page.

 

"We had two goals in opening these forums," says TIG co-chair Tracy Wharton. "To create a forum for social work specific discussion, and to open that discussion to our colleagues and friends, in an effort to spread the word about evaluation in social work. We were frequently on these forums ourselves and reasoned that, by having a presence, we would raise awareness simply by posting since every post appears in our personal timelines for all of our networks - which includes TIG members and non-members alike - to see."

 

Because Facebook formatting options change over time, the SW Facebook page was set up in 2010 as a group page. CPE and IC, meanwhile, are set up as a community page. Both agree it takes a while to build a following as well as a responsive community and both credit social media engagement as spurring both more interest in their respective TIGs as well as membership within AEA.

 

"There sometimes can be some apprehension about launching a TIG Facebook page," acknowledges Banyai. "Some worried the conversations they'd been enjoying on other platforms (the TIG listserve, for example) might disappear. We don't see it as a substitute but an adjunct."

 

"Our numbers have steadily grown since we started and I am always looking for new ways to get them to be more participative. I filter through the aea365 blog, the EVALTALK listserve, and AEA emails (including headlines) to post the most relevant information for the TIGs, paying special attention to deadlines such as conference proposal dates and awards nominations. Additionally, I set up Google Alerts for "collaborative evaluation," "empowerment evaluation," "participatory evaluation," and "evaluation policy" to search the web for broader tidbits relevant to the TIGs. I share blog posts from other evaluators or articles in related fields such as education, public health, and international development. And, for the IC TIG, I look for articles that help independent consultants such as management practices and networking. I post 1-2 times a day, typically morning and afternoon, Monday through Friday."

 

Interested in building your own social media presence?

 

Their advice: 1) update pages regularly to keep people interested and 2) delegate posting responsibilities to several. This will ensure fresh content perspectives and relieve the burden on one administrator. 3) Be patient.

AEA members Sharon Rallis and Gretchen Rossman are authors of The Research Journey: Introduction to Inquiry, a new book published by Guilford Press.

 

From the Publisher's Site:

"Designed to foster "inquiry-mindedness," this book prepares graduate students to develop a conceptual framework and conduct inquiry projects that are linked to ongoing conversations in a field. The authors examine different ways of knowing and show how to identify a research question; build arguments and support them with evidence; make informed design decisions; engage in reflective, ethical practices; and produce a written proposal or report. Each chapter opens with a set of critical questions, followed by a dialogue among five fictional graduate students exploring questions and concerns about their own inquiry projects; these issues are revisited throughout the chapter. Other useful features include end-of-chapter learning activities for individual or group use."

Useful pedagogical features include:

• Framing questions for exploration and reflection.
• Chapter-opening dialogues that bring in perspectives from multiple disciplines.
• Example boxes with detailed cases and questions for the reader.
• End-of-chapter activities and experiential exercises that guide readers to develop their own inquiry projects.
• Suggestions for further reading.

 From the Authors:

"For the past seven years, we have co-taught a course that introduces the concepts and processes of inquiry to graduate students in the social sciences and professional schools," notes Rallis and Rossman. "This course had its roots in the Inquiry for Practitioners course that Sharon developed and taught in the 90's at Vanderbilt University; the goal was to ground practice in theory asking three questions: What is knowledge? How is it produced? Who uses it and how? At the University of Massachusetts where we now teach, the course has become a required introductory inquiry course for doctoral students in several specializations. We have found that the course - Introduction to Inquiry - serves to socialize graduate students into the world of scholars who are committed to conducting research that will contribute to human well-being. The course also serves to familiarize graduate students with the discourses, norms, and practices of academia and the research enterprise."

 

About the Authors:

Sharon F. Rallis is Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor of Education Policy and Reform at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is also Director of the Center for Education Policy. She has coauthored 10 books, including several on leadership. Her interests include research and evaluation methodology, ethical practice in research and evaluation, education policy and leadership, and school reform. A Past President of AEA, Rallis has been involved with education and evaluation for over three decades as a teacher, counselor, principal, researcher, program evaluator, director of a major federal school reform initiative, and an elected school board member.

Gretchen B. Rossman is Chair of the Department of Educational Policy, Research and Administration and Professor of International Education at the Center for International Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her work focuses on qualitative research design and methods, mixed methods monitoring and evaluation, and inquiry in education, including the analysis and evaluation of educational reform initiatives both in the United States and internationally. She has coauthored nine books, including the major qualitative research texts Learning in the Field (with Sharon F. Rallis) and Designing Qualitative Research (with Catherine Marshall).

 

Go to the Publisher's Site

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