Kia ora! The beautiful NZ city of Wellington played host to the 2010 Australasian Evaluation Society (AES) Conference (Sept 1-3) which this year had the theme ‘Reflecting on Evaluation’.  In NZ for holidays at the same time, I was able to drop in for the first day.

After we were greeted in the traditional Maori way, the first keynote speaker, leading Maori scholar, Roger C A Maaka, spoke about Indigeneity in research and evaluation.

His conference abstract opened with this statement – From the vantage point of the colonised…the term ‘research’ is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism. The word itself ‘research’ is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary’.

I found it incredibly interesting thinking about evaluation from an indigenous perspective and valued what Roger Maaka had to say. A thought provoking point he made was that often research and evaluation agendas are controlled and established by political and intellectual spheres where indigenous viewpoints tend to be marginalised.

In his abstract he said that therefore the engagement of indigenous peoples in research and evaluation raises questions and challenges not only for indigenous people but for those who are engaged in research and evaluation.

The afternoon was broken into four forty-minute sessions with a variety of subjects on offer. My favourite was a paper presented by Cheryl Reed (TNS)  – Using technologies in evaluations: new methods bring new challenges for ethics.

I very much enjoyed seeing all the different ways new technologies can be used for data collection in evaluations including online panels, web crawlers and disposable video cameras.  All these methods have fabulous positives as well as ethical issues to consider in their use.

Second key note speaker Donna Mertens, Gallaudet University, closed day one with her look at – Bringing a social justice lens to credible evidence in program evaluation. She explored ethics in evaluation in terms of the furtherance of social justice and the enhancement of human rights as well as presenting strategies that have the potential to increase cultural responsiveness … including use of evaluation teams, capacity-building, and community-based interpretation of evidence (from abstract).

The 2011 AES conference is being held in Sydney 31 August – 2 September. If evaluation is your thing, it’s certainly worth attending.