Conference Theme

We live in a world of boundaries and borders — geographic borders, disciplinary boundaries, and intellectual territoriality. Competing models, professional jargon, and alternative frameworks sometimes divide us — as do perspectives, contexts, cultures, politics, values, and experiences. These differences also provide opportunities for cross-fertilization and possibilities for thinking about evaluation in new ways as we share diverse experiences and perspectives.

Boundaries and borders are human constructions. They can be and often are functional. While they sometimes create barriers to mutual understanding and communications, crossing borders and boundaries can offer opportunities for new syntheses, hybrid creations, and creative partnerships. In the interest of the further development of the evaluation profession and international collaboration, the theme for the 2005 Joint CES/AEA Evaluation Conference in Toronto is:

Crossing Borders, Crossing Boundaries

We have invited presentations on the broad and diverse ways in which our global profession is challenged to cross borders and boundariesincluding:

• International, global, and multi-national perspectives on and experiences with evaluation.
• Cross-cultural, multi-cultural, and intercultural evaluation approaches.
• Cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary evaluations, including increasing our understanding of the similarities and differences of views about evaluation among disciplines.
• Crossing linguistic borders and overcoming linguistic boundaries.
• Multi-site evaluations.
• Geographically diverse efforts across states, provinces, countries, and/or continents.
• Using different types of methods, including mixed methods, and crossing methodological and analytic borders.
• Working across theory or model boundaries.
• Synthesizing findings across different fields, program areas, or sectors.
• Integrating approaches (e.g., performance measurement and case studies).
• Combining different scales or units of analysis, e.g., working across local, state/provincial, and national borders.
• Working across diverse stakeholder groups.
• Dealing with value conflicts in evaluation.
• Crossing political lines and adapting evaluation to diverse political systems.
• Collaborations across agencies, departments, organizations, units, areas of responsibility.
• Working across and integrating sectors: government, NGOs, private sector.
• Combining styles, e.g., artistic and scientific approaches.
• Integrating alternative approaches to participatory evaluations.
• Blends of internal-external; formative-summative; bottoms-up/top-down; quantitative-qualitative; short-term/long-term; ongoing/episodic.
• Varying evaluator roles, including varying emphases on evaluators' independent judgments versus evaluator as facilitating change. Some evaluators walk a tight rope balancing the need to provide useful findings for those who advocate for social justice and social transformation at the same time avoiding bias that is sometimes associated with advocacy groups.

We want to encourage creative approaches to the theme as evaluators come together from around the world to explore Crossing Borders, Crossing Boundaries. The conference theme will be highlighted in a strand of specific thematic sessions.

Proposals focusing on the conference theme were submitted to any Topical Interest Group (TIG) for review. Each TIG will be asked to nominate one session that represents the session it believes best illustrates the conference theme for consideration for the thematic strand. Those nominated but not chosen will be scheduled as part of the TIG's regular sessions.

To register for the Conference, access the Registration page.
You may also download the complete registration pamphlet in PDF format.

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