Practitioner competence is a critical ingredient in the development of a robust, valid and equitable evaluation. In Aotearoa New Zealand the evaluator competencies identify cultural competence as a core capability. There are some particular challenges that Pākehā (New Zealand European) evaluators face in developing this competency. In grappling with these complex challenges, and in the ...

Cultural fit is a concept that can be applied to the effectiveness of one’s evaluation practice as well as the interventions that seek to help people. We argue that there is substantial vagueness about being culturally competent, or culturally responsive, or both, and that the concepts these terms are attempting to embody can be ...

Keynote Presentation
Our House, Our Whare, Our Fale: Building Strong Evaluation in Aotearoa New Zealand
Annual Conference of the Aotearoa New Zealand Evaluation Association (ANZEA)
Te Papa, Wellington, 7–10 July 2014

• Some background on how articles in Evaluation Matters—He Take Tō Te Aromatawai are offered online here as soon as they are finalised, but before they are added to a volume of the journal.

Public-sector programme evaluation in New Zealand has advanced significantly since the early 1990s, with growth in evaluation activity, improved service quality, and establishment of a formal training pathway and a national governance body. However, there is evidence of emerging challenges, particularly with respect to supply, quality, transparency, and leadership. This ...

The turbulent and fluid environment in which we find ourselves due to the COVID-19 pandemic requires evaluative responses that facilitate learning, adaptation, and timeliness. This article examines the last of these—the need for timely evaluative information. Such information requires evaluators and their clients making trade-offs between what is desirable and ...

This article was triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and the antiracist protests that have swept the world. Both developments have brought to the surface the social inequities and the existential risks that face humanity in a complex and interconnected world. Indigenous evaluation is highly relevant to both predicaments. Since I ...

"I started taking notice of the coronavirus outbreak when it started to quickly spread to other countries. On 13 January 2020 a first COVID-19 case outside China was confirmed in Thailand. When Europe got affected and numbers started exponentially rising in Italy and England, I became concerned.
"When the World ...

The current COVID-19 pandemic has provided the world with a range of crisis leadership case studies as nations’ leaders approach control of, and communication about, the virus in dramatically different ways. Drawing on the literature and the author’s post-disaster and post-crisis studies, this reflective piece offers a framework for analysing ...