Meta-evaluation to improve learning, evaluation capacity development and sustainability : Findings from a participatory evaluation project in Nepal

Recent studies suggest that meta-evaluation can be valuable in developing new approaches to evaluation, building evaluation capacities, and enhancing organizational learning. These new extensions of the concept of meta-evaluation are significant, given the growing emphasis on improving the quality and effectiveness of evaluation practices in the South Asian region. Following a review of the literature, this paper presents a case study of the use of concurrent meta-evaluation in the four-year project Assessing Communication for Social Change which developed and trialled a participatory impact assessment methodology in collaboration with a development communication Non-government organization (NGO) in Nepal. Key objectives of the meta-evaluation included to: continuously develop, adapt and improve the impact assessment methodology, Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems and process and other project activities; identify impacts of the project; and build capacities in critical reflection and review. Our analysis indicates that this meta-evaluation was essential to understanding various constraints related to the organizational context that affected the success of the project and the development of improved M&E systems and capacities within the NGO. We identified several limitations of our meta-evaluation methods, which were balanced by the strengths of other methods. Our case study suggests that as well as assessing the quality, credibility and value of evaluation practices, meta-evaluations need to focus on important contextual issues that can have significant impacts on the outcomes of participatory evaluation projects. They include hierarchical organizational cultures, communication barriers, power/knowledge relations, and the time and resources available. Meta-evaluations also need to consider wider issues such as the sustainability of evaluation systems and approaches.

PMI Research and Education Conference 2010

The PMI Research and Education Conference 2010 ended one week ago at the time of this writing. Aside from 3 enlightening keynote speeches, 78 proffered papers were presented. On the basis of the reviewers' assessments, the 10 best papers have been selected to form this special issue...

The unresolved struggles between project managers and functional managers in matrix organizations

Having personal that works in projects but belongs to a functional organization is the way that many companies organized their labor force today. Previous research shows that this implies management contradictions and ambiguities between functional manager and project manager; there are unresolved struggles between these two roles in terms of power, accountability, authority and legitimacy. With this paper we aim to analyze those struggles based on previous research and to generate working hypotheses. We first provide a review of the different matrix organizations focusing on the relation between the functional manager and the project manager. We then review the literature concerning temporary organizations and projects as temporary organizations. We conclude by integrating the findings of these perspectives and by identifying working hypotheses and areas for further research.

Contextualizing a university-school STEM education collaboration : distributed and self-activated leadership for project outcomes

Implementing educational reform requires partnerships, and university-school collaborations in the form of investigative and experimental projects can aim to determine the practicalities of reform. However, there are funded projects that do not achieve intended outcomes. In the context of a new reform initiative in education, namely, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, this article explores the management of a government-funded project. In a university school partnership for STEM education, how can leadership be distributed for achieving project outcomes? Participants included university personnel from different STEM areas, school teachers and school executives. Data collected included observations, interviews, resource materials, and video and photographic images. Findings indicated that leadership roles were distributed and selfactivated by project partners according to their areas of expertise and proximal activeness to the project phases, that is: (1) establishing partnerships; (2) planning and collaboration; (3) project implementation; and (4) project evaluation and further initiatives. Leadership can be intentional and unintentional within project phases, and understanding how leadership can be distributed and selfactivated more purposefully may aid in generating more expedient project outcomes.

The process of remembering with The Forgotten Australians : digital storytelling and marginalized groups

Digital storytelling projects have proliferated in Australia since the early 2000s, and have been theorized as a means to disseminate the stories and voices of “ordinary” people. In this paper I examine through the case study of a 2009 digital storytelling project between the Australasian Centre for Interactive Design and a group identifying as Forgotten Australian whether digital storytelling in its predominant workshop-based format is able to meet the needs of profoundly marginalized and traumatized individuals and groups. For digital storytelling to be of use to marginalized groups as a means of communication or reflection a significant re-examination of the current approaches to its format, and its function needs to undertaken. This paper posits new ways of utilizing digital storytelling when dealing with trauma narratives.

Shut up and write! Some surprising uses of cafes and crowds in doctoral writing

This chapter discusses a ‘writing movement’, which is currently occurring in various parts of Australia through the support of social media. A concept emerging from the café scene in San Francisco, ‘Shut Up and Write!’ is a meetup group that brings writers together at a specific time and place to write side by side, thus making writing practice, social. This concept has been applied to the academic environment and our case-study explores the positive outcomes in two locations: RMIT University and Queensland University of Technology. This informal learning practice can be implemented to assist research students in developing academic skills.

The value of books : the fantastic flying books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and the social hieroglyphic of reading

The late eighteenth century witnessed the emergence of new technologies of subjectivity and of the literary. Most obviously, “the novel as a literary form appeared to embody and turn into an object the experience of life itself” (Park), and the novel genre came to both reflect and shape notions of interiority and subjectivity. In this same period, “A shift was taking place in the way people felt and thought about children and the accoutrements of childhood, including books and toys, were implicated in this change” (Lewis). In seeking to understand the relationships between media (e.g. books and toys), genres (e.g. novels and picture books), and modes of subjectivity, Marx’s influential theory of commodity fetishism, whereby “a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things”, has served as a productive tool of analysis. The extent to which Marx’s account of commodity fetishism continues to be of use becomes clear when the corollaries between the late eighteenth-century emergence of novels and pictures books as technologies of subjectivity and the early twenty-first century emergence of e-readers and digital texts as technologies of subjectivity are considered. This paper considers the literary technology of Apple’s iPad (first launched in 2010) as a commodity fetish, and the circulation of “apps” as texts made available by and offered as justifications for, this fetish object. The iPad is both book and toy, but is never “only” either; it is arguably a new technology of subjectivity which incorporates but also destabilises categories of reading and playing such as those made familiar by earlier technologies of literature and the self. The particular focus of this paper is on the multimodal versions (app, film, and picture book) of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which are understood here as a narrativisation of commodity fetishism, subjectivity, and the act of reading itself.

Supporting children's language and literacy skills : the effectiveness of shared book reading intervention strategies with parents

Parents are encouraged to read with their children from an early age because shared book reading helps children to develop their language and early literacy skills. A pragmatic Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) research design was adopted to investigate the influence of two forms of a shared reading intervention (Dialogic Reading and Dialogic Reading with the addition of Print Referencing) on children’s language and literacy skills. Dialogic reading is a validated shared reading intervention that has been shown to improve children’s oral language skills prior to formal schooling (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). Print referencing is another form of shared reading intervention that has the potential to have effects on children’s print knowledge as they begin school (Justice & Ezell, 2002). However, training parents to use print referencing strategies at home has not been researched extensively although research findings indicate its effectiveness when used by teachers in the early years of school. Eighty parents of Preparatory year children from three Catholic schools in low income areas in the outer suburbs of a metropolitan city were trained to deliver specific shared reading strategies in an eight-week home intervention. Parents read eight books to their children across the period of the intervention. Each book was requested to be read at least three times a week. There were 42 boys and 38 girls ranging in age from 4.92 years to 6.25 years (M=5.53, SD=0.33) in the sample. The families were randomly assigned to three groups: Dialogic Reading (DR); Dialogic Reading with the addition of Print Referencing (DR + PR); and a Control group. Six measures were used to assess children’s language skills at pre and post, and follow-up (three months after the intervention). These measures assessed oral language (receptive and expressive vocabulary), phonological awareness skills (rhyme, word completion), alphabet knowledge, and concepts about print. Results of the intervention showed that there were significant differences from pre to post between the two intervention groups and the control group on three measures: expressive vocabulary, rhyme, and concepts about print. The shared reading strategies delivered by parents of the dialogic reading, and dialogic reading with the addition of print referencing, showed promising results to develop children’s oral language skills in terms of expressive vocabulary and rhyme, as well as understanding of the concepts about print. At follow-up, when the children entered Year 1, the two intervention groups (DR and DR + PR) group had significantly maintained their knowledge of concepts about prints when compared with the control group. Overall, the findings from this intervention study did not show that dialogic reading with the addition of print referencing had stronger effects on children’s early literacy skills than dialogic reading alone. The research also explored if pre-existing family factors impacted on the outcomes of the intervention from pre to post. The relationships between maternal education and home reading practices prior to intervention and child outcomes at post were considered. However, there were no significant effects of maternal education and home literacy activities on child outcomes at post. Additionally, there were no significant effects for the level of compliance of parents with the intervention program in terms of regular weekly reading to children during the intervention period on child outcomes at post. These non-significant findings are attributed to the lack of variability in the recruited sample. Parents participating in the intervention had high levels of education, although they were recruited from schools in low socio-economic areas; parents were already highly engaged in home literacy activities at recruitment; and the parents were highly compliant in reading regularly to their child during the intervention. Findings of the current study did show that training in shared reading strategies enhanced children’s early language and literacy skills. Both dialogic reading and dialogic reading with the addition of print referencing improved children’s expressive vocabulary, rhyme, and concepts about print at post intervention. Further research is needed to identify how, and if, print referencing strategies used by parents at home can be effective over and above the use of dialogic reading strategies. In this research, limitations of sample size and the nature of the intervention to use print referencing strategies at home may have restricted the opportunities for this research study to find more effects on children’s emergent literacy skills or for the effectiveness of combining dialogic reading with print referencing strategies. However, these results did indicate that there was value in teaching parents to implement shared reading strategies at home in order to improve early literacy skills as children begin formal schooling.

Acting and knowing in temporary and project-based organizing : turning from the practice world to a liberation praxeology?

The purpose of this article is to offer a critical discussion about the “practice” lens and its weaknesses in addressing acting and knowledge & competence development in the context of temporary and project-based organizing. I demonstrate that “practice turn” and “phronetic proposal” are dual and opposite perspectives within the “practice” world, none of them being fully relevant to grasp project organizing and that each of them maintain the opposition between the “observer” and the “natives “of the practices. I suggest an alternate style of reasoning in order to address the dissatisfaction in face of problems, antinomies, perplexities and contradictions generated by the dichotomous thinking: a liberation praxeology rooted in Aristotle philosophy aiming, through praxis & phronesis and practical acquired experience & perfecting actualization, at reconciling facts & values and means & ends, and Ethics & Politics in the quest for human happiness and social good through project organizing.

Soundage : a practice-led approach to Gertrude Stein, sound, and generative language

In this practice-led research project I work to show how a re-reading and a particular form of listening to the sound-riddled nature of Gertrude Stein's work, Two: Gertrude Stein and her Brother, presents us with a contemporary theory of sound in language. This theory, though in its infancy, is a particular enjambment of sounded language that presents itself as an event, engaged with meaning, with its own inherent voice. It displays a propensity through engagement with the 'other' to erupt into love. In this thesis these qualities are reverberated further through the work of Seth Kim-Cohen's notion of the non-cochlear, Simon Jarvis's notion of musical thinking, Jean-Jacques Lecercle's notion of délire or nonsense, Luce Irigaray's notion of jouissant love and the Bracha Ettinger's notion of the generative matrixial border space. This reading then is simultaneously paired with my own work of scoring and creating a digital opera from Stein's work, thereby testing and performing Stein's theory. In this I show how a re-reading and relistening to Stein's work can be significant to feminist ethical language frames, contemporary philosophy, sonic art theory and digital language frames. Further significance of this study is that when the reverberation of Stein's engagements with language through sound can be listened to, a pattern emerges, one that encouragingly problematizes subjectivity and interweaves genres/methods and means, creating a new frame for sound in language, one with its own voice that I call soundage.

Capturing the 'authentic voice' : challenges and opportunities for voice and self-representation in two ABC storytelling projects

In recent years there has been a noticeable move by various public institutions, such as public service broadcasters and community media organisations, to capture and disseminate the voices and viewpoints of ‘ordinary people’ through inviting them to share stories about their lives. One of the foremost objectives of many such projects is to provide under-represented individuals and groups with an opportunity to express and represent themselves; as such, the capture and broadcast of ‘authentic voices’ is a central value. This paper discusses the notion of ‘authentic voice’, and questions the framing role of public media organisations in storytelling projects that aim to provide individuals with space for self-expression and self-representation. It considers the ways in which tensions arise on multiple levels when individuals are asked to express and represent themselves within projects and spaces that are managed by institutions. This paper begins by discussing the challenges and opportunities that arise within storytelling projects that are facilitated by public institutions and community media arts organisations, and that aim to amplify the voices of “ordinary people” (Thumim, 2009). It examines ways in which ‘voice’ is facilitated, curated, broadcast and distributed within such projects, particularly questioning the ways in which project facilitation and the curation of stories for public broadcast can both help and hinder the amplification of ‘authentic voice’. Furthermore, we seek to discuss how ‘authentic voice’ is defined, and what is involved in the process of amplification. The paper moves on to discuss a case study in order to demonstrate some of the tensions that are evident within a storytelling project that is managed by a public institution – Australia’s national broadcaster – and the ways these tensions impact upon the capture and broadcast of an ‘authentic voice’ for project participants. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) ‘Heywire’ project is a storytelling competition and website that aims to ‘give voice’ to 16-22 year olds who live in rural, regional and remote parts of Australia. Looking at tensions that exist on organisational, political and philosophical levels within the Heywire project reveals a number of conflicts of interest and objectives between the institution and project participants. This leads us to question whether institutionally-managed storytelling projects can effectively support individuals to have an ‘authentic voice’, and whether struggles of aims and objectives diminish the personal benefits that people may derive from expressing and representing themselves within such projects.

Queensland small towns Documentary project

This photographic documentary project explores diverse stories of Queensland mining towns. Images compare the interplay between communities, commerce and natural resources. The project is a collaboration between three Brisbane universities (Queensland University of Technology, Griffith University and University of Queensland) and is supported by the Brisbane Powerhouse and the State Library of Queensland. Funded by a $50,000 Arts Queensland grant.

Conceptualizing the interplay of knowledge accumulation and integration capabilities in service innovation-based competitive strategy : a project-oriented firm context

While past knowledge-based approaches to service innovation have emphasized the role of integration of knowledge in the provisioning of solutions, these approaches fail to address complexities involved with knowledge integration in project-oriented context, specifically, how the firm’s capability to acquire new knowledge from clients and past project episodes influence the development of new service solutions. Adopting a dynamic capability framework and building on knowledge-based approaches to innovation, this paper presents a conceptual model that captures the interplay of learning capabilities and the knowledge integration capability in the service innovation-based competitive strategy. Implications to theory and directions for future research are discussed.

Re-presenting the past : authenticity and the historical novel

This project involved writing Turrwan (great man), a novel set in Queensland in the nineteenth century, and an investigation into the way historical novels portray the past. Turrwan tells the story of Tom Petrie, who was six when he arrived with his family at the notorious Moreton Bay Penal Colony in 1837. The thesis examines historical fiction as a genre with particular focus on notions of historical authenticity. It analyses the complexities involved in a non-Indigenous person writing about the Australian Aboriginal people, and reflects on the process of researching, planning and writing a historical novel.