Evaluation as a Bridging Profession

This blog is largely inspired by some recent conversations with colleagues (read below), the theme of the Canadian Evaluation Society's 2019 conference of Bridges, and the blog post by Jade Malone about "un-boxing" evaluation in reference to the theme of the Australian Evaluation Society's conference on Evaluation Un-Boxed.I’ve written previously about evaluation as one potential bridge between research and practice. Evaluation uses social science research to inform practice, but perhaps could do more work in using practice to inform social science research. As evaluators, we are often “caught between two worlds,” either coming to evaluation from one side or the other. For that reason, evaluators are poised to be able to speak the disparate “languages” of both researchers and practitioners and communicate between the two. This idea of evaluation as a bridging mechanism between research and practice comes from Dr. Tiffany Berry at Claremont Graduate University, whose role as both evaluator and researcher led her to think of evaluation in this intermediary or bridging capacity.I have been thinking a lot lately about evaluation as this bridge. I am not sure this is necessarily the perfect metaphor. A bridge connects two things, but someone on the bridge is never on both sides at the same time. A Venn diagram, which I used in my previous blog post on this topic, might better describe this work. Or perhaps a river can represent the field of evaluation, where water molecules can move at 1,300 mph and thus practically be in two places at once (though, obviously, not really).Science communicators struggle with this metaphor problem, too. Are they conveners, intermediaries, brokers, third parties, mediators, or boundary spanners? There are subtle yet important distinctions between all of these words. For instance, intermediaries are often third-party people or organizations that work in their own space but actively facilitate the work between two other parties whereas knowledge brokers and boundary spanners seem to operate in the space of the other two parties much more frequently. I may be reading too much into the literature here, but in reviewing literature for my dissertation I caught these subtle distinction between terms (although some use these terms interchangeably).I have particularly been caught up with the word boundary lately. I am in an exciting evaluation co-operative with C Camman, Brian Hoessler, Zach Tilton, and Beth Snow (thanks Twitter for bringing us together!) where we have decided to pursue conversation about what the topic of boundaries and relationships mean to us. This blog is partly for me to dump my thoughts on this topic as it’s been on my mind a lot lately. It’s also my attempt to be better at reflective practice, especially as my mind has been so encompassed by my research (dissertation!) and teaching lately.In thinking of evaluation as a bridging profession, I think of evaluators as boundary-spanners. We span the boundaries between research and practice, between organizational learning and accountability, between knowledge and use. I think of evaluation perhaps as the third bubble with research and practice. In that regard, we don’t navigate between the two lands of research and practice but rather actively bring them together in some capacity. As C pointed out, “bridges imply a span between spaces. Boundaries are a demarcation between spaces.”C also asked me what it means “to exist within or supersede beyond the demarcation between” research and practice. This is a particularly appropriate question given that I’m also a researcher. I know the language of research, but I am less fluent in the language of practice. What does that mean? Am I more biased towards the sphere of research than I am practice because I am more fluent there? This is particularly worrisome given the power differential between researchers and the practitioners researchers research.But I am primarily an evaluator, and so I am thinking more about what all this means for evaluation in particular. And these thoughts have always led me towards thinking about the professionalism debate. What does it mean to be an evaluator? Who can be an evaluator? Does it matter who can call themselves an evaluator? What kind of evaluator can best span the boundary between research and practice? Can any evaluator, or a particular evaluator?The question of who can call themselves an evaluator can also be revised to be referencing boundaries, too. What is the boundary between evaluator and [insert another person]? Between evaluation and [insert another thing]?  For instance, what is the difference between evaluation and research? I’ve been investigating this and thinking about it a lot lately, especially as I write up my latest publication. Does it matter to set the boundaries between evaluation and other professions/disciplines? What will the boundaries be? Who decides what the boundaries are? What are the implications of setting boundaries?I clearly have no definitive answers here. I’d love your thoughts on the matter. What comes to mind when you think of boundaries? Do you think it matters if we create boundaries on evaluation/evaluators? What are the implications of doing so or not?