Complexity-Aware Evaluation for Learning: A Case Study of a Developmental Approach
Date
2025-01-25
Authors
Rosenberg, Eureta
Kotschy, Karen
Pollard, Sharon
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JMDE
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Article
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Abstract
Background: Ongoing learning is vital for steering programs in complex social-ecological systems, because it enables implementers to change course when needed, and ideally contributes to system wide insights as well. While there are many calls and guidelines for complexity-aware and learning-centred monitoring and evaluation (M&E), there are fewer case examples of attempts to implement it in practice.
Purpose: This paper reflects on a multi-year case of an attempt to design and implement a complexity-aware, developmental and learning-centred M&E framework in a complex socio-ecological landscape, highlighting the challenges, adaptations and evidence of learning.
Setting: Olifants River Basin, north-eastern South Africa and southern Mozambique.
Intervention: Resilience in the Limpopo (Olifants Basin) Program (RESILIM-O).
Research Design: Participatory action-reflection research with data collection through document analysis, interviews and focus groups.
Findings: Learning among program implementers was facilitated by working in new ways with standard M&E elements including indicator-based targets and theories of change, and through opportunities for shared reflection, including novel reporting templates, reflection days, and collaborative case studies. Challenges notwithstanding, the participatory, developmental M&E approach built understanding of and competence in M&E in the organisation. The “hybrid” framework that evolved successfully combined the need for accountability with the desire for organisational learning; and associated features were subsequently adopted elsewhere.
Description
The version of record of this article, first published in Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation, is available online at Publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.56645/jmde.v21i49.1107
Keywords
complexity-aware evaluation, developmental evaluation, hybrid design, organisational learning, reflective practice
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DOI
https://doi.org/10.56645/jmde.v21i49.1107