The newest concept I’m wrapping my head around.
Great, so we are gathering people together, hosting meaningful conversations, and things are starting to happen. How do we evaluate the success of an intervention, action or relationship in a constantly changing world?
How do we know what we need to adapt without losing connection to the purpose and people? Are we creating more effective, responsible, responsive and sustainable outcomes? How do we know when the evidence is never absolute? How do we capture our ongoing learning and adapt to new knowledge as it arises?
These are just some of the questions I had when I first started looking for an evaluative process for our Social Innovation Lab.
I started by asking my network for advice, and was connected to the work of Micheal Quinn Patton & Developmental Evaluation, which informs and supports innovative and adaptive development of initiatives occurring in complex, dynamic environments.
Developmental Evaluation asks for ongoing learning within a certain context.
It doesn’t ask “was it effective?”. That’s a Yes/No answer, and doesn’t capture what we are learning in real time to inform the future of the project or initiative.
It asks us to answer:
- what works?
- for whom?
- in what ways?
- under what conditions?
- with what consequences?
- in what context?
There are different types of developmental evaluation, and plenty of videos by Micheal Quinn Patton explaining the challenges and implications of each on YouTube.
what it looks like in my practice:
An online form for project teams to complete after an activity, and also at their monthly project review meetings. This form captures our learning(s) using the following questions:
- How are the participants actively involved in the project activities? You can share a story as an example or describe what you saw/experienced.
- What key challenges arose during implementation of the project?
- What unexpected positive outcomes are emerging from the project?
- Which components of the project are most impactful and why?
- How can we adapt the design to address emerging needs?
- Additional feedback on what you’re learning from the project.
- What made you uncomfortable?
- What has stuck with you? (a story, question(s), insights)
Like I said, this area is new(ish) to me. Although I have extensive experience with formative and summative assessments from my years as a classroom teacher, developmental evaluation asks for a different lens to be put on activities.
What I like about it so far is that it is a process of asking questions, applying an evaluation logic (what you think is going to happen), gathers and reports on the development of a project, program, product or organization, with timely feedback.
Leaving room for agility and curiosity when working with wickedly complex problems.
