Most recently, I have been leading and conducting research on agricultural education, training, research, and extension in Senegal, which fits well into my overarching research agenda focused on how knowledge is created, shared, and used to effect socially just community development.
More generally, my research is on program planning and evaluation in non-formal education, focused on three overlapping areas of inquiry:
Evaluation capacity building (ECB) and evaluative thinking;
Evidence-based programs, evidence-based practices, and translational research for research-practice integration; and
Participatory and collaborative research and evaluation.
Throughout all three areas, my work is informed by a cross-cutting focus on issues of power, participation, epistemology, and methodology.
In the domain of ECB, I focus on approaches to strengthening the individual and institutional capacity of non-formal educators to evaluate their own programs, drawing on a variety of evaluation paradigms such as systems evaluation, theory-driven evaluation, collaborative and participatory evaluation, and developmental evaluation.
In my focus on research-practice integration, I examine the practices involved in various approaches to “bridging the research-practice gap.” Some dominant approaches emphasize “evidence-based programs,” in which “evidence” refers only to that which is produced through a randomized controlled trial (RCT). My research offers new perspectives on the politics of knowledge that enact and are enacted by the “evidence-based” movements.
The primary settings for my research are the Cooperative Extension system and other non-formal, community-based education initiatives both domestically and internationally.