Every Practitioner a “Knowledge Worker”: Promoting Evaluative Thinking to Enhance Learning and Adaptive Management in International Development

Abstract

International community development involves complex, dynamic processes. Evaluation capacity building (ECB) designed to promote evaluative thinking among community development practitioners can foster more complexity‐aware monitoring and evaluation for learning and adaptive management. Instead of simply executing technical processes based on predetermined plans, development practitioners can be “knowledge workers” who use evaluative thinking to promote collaboration, learning, and adaptation. In this chapter, framed in the context of the United States Agency for International Development's ongoing efforts to become a more effective learning organization, we describe one such ECB initiative implemented by Catholic Relief Services in Zambia, Ethiopia, and Malawi. The chapter provides reflections on a practical application and empirical grounding of theoretical concepts related to complexity‐aware and learning‐focused evaluation.

Applying the Systems Evaluation Protocol in the real world: Six case studies

“…As significant actors in the aid world, the network of CRS country programs has been at the forefront of establishing best practices for evaluation in their dynamic and unpredictable contexts, in line with the current emphasis by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on collaborating, learning, and adapting (Archibald, Sharrock, Buckley, & Young, 2018). Guy Sharrock, Senior Advisor for Monitoring and Evaluation at CRS, identified evaluative thinking as a critical component of program management and evaluation and prompted the development of the workshops described here.…”

“…Because of the size, dispersion, and internal power dynamics that characterize these organizations, the facilitators designed a set of nine workshops: one workshop a year for 3 years for each of three groups. The three participant groups included field staff, program managers, and country‐level leadership (see Figure 4.2 in Archibald et al., 2018).…”

Promoting evaluation in youth character development through enhanced Evaluation Capacity Building: Empirical findings from the PACE Project

“…10). More specifically, the ET skills and practices introduced as part of PACE offered practical and effective ways to surface assumptions, pose the optimal evaluation questions, and weigh important considerations before making key decisions (Archibald, Sharrock, Buckley, & Young, 2018; Buckley et al., 2015).…”

Lessons Learned From Implementing Prospective, Multicountry Mixed-Methods Evaluations for Gavi and the Global Fund

“…This approach is in line with calls for more participatory and collaborative models for learning and evaluation in the international development field. [22][23][24] This initial messaging of the FCE and PCE as partnerships focused on learning set the stage for a more collaborative relationship between evaluators and program implementers. The CEPs established close relationships with country stakeholders who were able to share documents and data, extend meeting invitations, and serve as key informants.…”