A presentation by Camilla Child and Dione Hills as part of our new series on The Dynamics of Evaluation, which contributes to the celebration of the International Year of Evaluation.
The series of dialogues begins with a session on the topic of ‘evaluation as reflective practice’. Two short presentations (one from a consultant, and one from an evaluator) started the event. One, from Camilla Child who provided a short introduction to reflective practice, on what constitutes the effective ‘use of self’ (using our own experiences) as data in consulting and research practice, and how this can contribute to the support of learning in organisations and programmes. The other from Dione Hills, who then provided some observation on the role of reflective practice when undertaking an evaluation, and on how the concept of ‘the reflective practitioner’ fits in with emerging trends in the ‘professionalisation’ of evaluation. Following this, there was an experiential opportunity for the audience to explore together the meaning of these ideas in day to day practice, and to reflect on their implications when we are either in the role of evaluators, or as a ‘recipient’ of evaluation activities.
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Camilla Child is a Principal Consultant/ Researcher at the Tavistock Institute. Camilla has been involved in consultancy, coaching, training and evaluation at the TIHR since 1992. Her consultancy practice includes working closely with clients to support learning and deliver change by developing and supporting reflective spaces in which new routines and behaviours can be explored. Her main areas of expertise include the organisation and management of cross boundary and multi-disciplinary working; understanding organisational design and the impact this has on delivery and service users. She is also part of the team that delivers the Tavistock Institute’s Practitioner Certificate in Consulting and Change (PC3) course.
Dione Hills is a Principal Consultant/ Researcher at the Tavistock Institute. Dione has been involved in the developing and implementing innovative evaluation designs at TIHR since 1986. In addition to leading evaluation teams in evaluations across a range of sectors (public health, community development, transport, the environment) she has also written a number of papers on evaluation theory, and regularly delivers evaluation training, most recently to policy makers and analysts in the civil service. She is leading the team developing a professional development offer on ‘the dynamics of evaluation’ and is part of a UK Evaluation society team piloting a new Voluntary Evaluator Peer Review System (VEPR) using the principles of reflective practice.
UPDATE: You can also watch a recording of ‘Evaluation as reflective practice‘ a live open class that took place recently as part of the Tavistock Chair in Social Science for Education and Change at the Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR).
Download a flyer detailing the Dynamics of Evaluation series.