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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- Case Teaching Questions Evaluation Points to Elicit During Questioning
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Teaching Case: Evaluation of Preschool for California’s Children
5 Case Teaching Questions Evaluation Points to Elicit During Questioning 4. Flexibility and Timing: How can evaluators simultaneously meet demands for flexibility and quick timing while also maintaining data collection quality and rigor? What are the implications for evaluation contracts and resources with strategic learning approaches? With a strategic learning approach, timing is everything. To ensure that evaluation is used, evaluators who aim to support real-‐time learning and decision making must deliver the right data at the right time. They must be flexible—willing to adjust their data collection plans according to how the environment or strategy is shifting; and timely—providing data and facilitating learning at the right time to inform strategic decisions. Evaluators who support strategic learning often must have the capacity to work rapidly—quick to design, implement, and analyze data; and
when the need arises. All of the data and intelligence needs of an evolving strategy cannot be anticipated at the outset of a social change effort, and many arise at a moment’s notice. Fast-‐moving policy environments, for example, often present unexpected windows of opportunity or quick and unexpected changes in momentum. This case offers the opportunity to discuss issues around the communication structure, resource investments, and other practical concerns that are needed to make a strategic learning evaluation work for both evaluators and funders. 5. Learning: What does it mean for a strategic learning evaluation to be successful? How do we know when strategic learning has occurred? What structure and processes are important to ensure such learning occurs? What is the evaluator’s responsibility in the learning process?
While the quality of data collection and design is crucial, the ultimate criterion for the success of a strategic learning approach is the extent to which the client uses the information generated through data collection and reflection to answer strategy-‐related questions. Evaluation for strategic learning is necessarily utilization-‐focused, and is therefore committed to actionable data. However, evaluators supporting strategic learning cannot assume that learning necessarily happens simply because data are available, even when data are actionable and timely. To help support use, evaluators must collect and then frame data in a way that clarifies its connection to strategy and tactics, surfacing its implications. Evaluators must also build in intentional learning and reflection processes so that its users—the strategic decision makers—become sensemakers, too, interpreting the meaning of data and uncovering the implications together. This case allows for a discussion about how the evaluators attempted to foster learning and use of data, and how the Foundation responded. In some cases, the Foundation chose to go in a different direction than the evaluation data suggested. Does this mean that strategic learning did not occur?
TEACHING CASE Evaluation of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Preschool for California’s Children Grantmaking Program by Susan Parker Clear Thinking Communications
Introduction This case tells the story of how external evaluators and program staff at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation took a risk on a nontraditional approach to evaluation. Called “real-‐time evaluation” or “developmental evaluation,” this approach aims to promote strategic learning by providing regular, timely information about how a strategy is unfolding, which organizations then use to inform future work and make course corrections.
This type of evaluation relies heavily on skills that are often not required of evaluators and program officers. To be successful, a specific organizational culture must also be present. The evaluators had tried this approach at another foundation and experienced several challenges. While they had faith in this newer evaluation approach, they were also wary from their earlier experience.
Packard program officers, meanwhile, had mixed experiences with evaluation. Some were unconvinced that evaluations were useful. The Packard Board of Trustees, while open to employing a new approach to evaluation, also had more traditional evaluation questions about long-‐term impacts. What’s more, the context was challenging—the Packard Foundation had recently suffered a devastating loss of assets and needed to make large cuts in its grantmaking programs.
During this time, Packard made a major investment in a strategy to ensure that all three-‐ and four-‐ year-‐olds in California would have access to preschool within 10 years. The preschool grantmaking program was among the largest and most audacious programs that Packard had ever funded. Hand in hand with this bold strategy, Packard contracted for an evaluation approach that had potential but was yet to be fully tested. The Beginning In March 2002, Lois Salisbury came to work at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation at one of the most difficult periods in the Foundation’s nearly 40-‐year history. Packard had hired Salisbury to head its Children, Families, and Communities program, one of six grantmaking program areas.
Salisbury, who had worked for 20 years as a class action civil rights litigator and later led Children Now, California’s largest child advocacy organization in the state, is at heart an advocate, a fighter and a risk taker. She was taking a calculated risk coming to Packard. Yüklə 480,23 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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