Evaluators have more power than they realize.

In researching and writing a new introductory text on program evaluation over the last two years, Gail Barrington has come to really understand the phrase, “context matters.” It shapes “the questions we address, the designs and methods we choose, the ways in which we report our findings,” (Rog, 2012, p. 25). It is time for evaluators to look seriously at the intractable issues and wicked problems that face our world, to raise our awareness, open the discussion, and look at strategies that offer a way to see the interconnections between the global and the local and between world-wide patterns and area-specific challenges (Patton, 2020, p. 3). Evaluators have more power than they realize. They have “the awesome responsibility of speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves to, in essence, define their reality” (Thomas et al., 2018, p. 516).

We stand at the nexus of environmental and large-scale political problems, racism and other identity issues, and organizations and structures which fail to respond to the apparent need for change. It’s time to talk about it.

Presenter:

Gail Vallance Barrington holds degrees from McGill University (BA), Carleton University (MA) and the University of Alberta (PhD in Educational Administration). She is a Credentialed Evaluator and a certified teacher. She has conducted over 130 program evaluation studies in education, health, and research. Based on her consulting experience, she wrote her popular book, Consulting Start-up and Management: A Guide for Evaluators and Applied Researchers (SAGE, 2012). She served on the boards of both the Canadian Evaluation Society (CES) and the American Evaluation Association (AEA). Awards include the CES Contribution to Evaluation in Canada Award (2008) and the AEA Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Award for Evaluation Practice (2016). She is a Fellow of the Canadian Evaluation Society (2018) and the Certified Management Consultants of Canada (2014). Gail teaches program evaluation and research methods to Masters’ students and her upcoming program evaluation text will be available in Spring 2022.

• Look for: Barrington, G. V., & Triana-Tremain, B. (2022). Evaluation time: A practical guide for Program Evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Latest interview with Ann-Murray Brown
• Latest presentation for the American Evaluation Association Independent Consulting Topical Interest Group: Independent Consulting as a Second Career
• For more information see www.barringtonresearchgrp.com.

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Cost: CES Members – $75 | Non-members – $100

Note – If we do not reach our minimum number of participants for this session, it will be cancelled and refunds will be issued.