aes26 International Evaluation Conference: Full Schedule

Presenter and chair information page, resources for conference presenters, authors and session chairs.

11:00am ACST

Measuring what matters: Culturally responsive evaluation of a statewide ECEC strategy

Wednesday September 16, 2026 11:00am - 11:30am ACST

Authors: Phillip Belling, NSW Department Of Education Jessica de Jesus, NSW Department Of Education, Rowan Savage, Aboriginal Education & Communities, NSW Department of Education

Presenter note: Rowan has been an important contributor to this work and was originally hoped to join the presentation in person. As the opportunity to present at aes26 was only confirmed in the past two days, the short timeframe unfortunately made it difficult to arrange for him to travel to Garrmalang | Darwin. We’re sorry Rowan can’t be here in person and acknowledge the perspective and contribution he has brought to the work being shared.

Government strategies to improve Aboriginal children’s access to culturally safe, high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) are increasingly ambitious, and also increasingly measured. Yet many mainstream outcome frameworks privilege what is easy to count (enrolments, attendance, completions) over what Aboriginal families and communities say really matters (cultural safety, belonging, relationships, self-determination, and thriving). And while there is a growing number of evaluations of pilots, projects and small scale programs, there are few examples of culturally responsive evaluations of large-scale, multi-program and strategy-level initiatives.

This session shares an approach being used in the NSW Department of Education to build culturally meaningful process indicators and outcome measures for a statewide ECEC strategy. Drawing on lessons from recent evaluations of state-level ECEC programs and evaluation designs, we present a practical method for moving from policy intent to measurable outcomes without collapsing cultural concepts into deficit metrics.

The approach combines: (1) outcome-domain mapping that starts with Aboriginal-led commitments and community-informed constructs; (2) a set of core indicators that deliberately pairs quantitative indicators with qualitative evidence (yarning, narrative case examples, workforce and service reflections) so that relationships and cultural safety are visible; and (3) governance and data sensemaking processes that keep Aboriginal authority central in interpreting evidence and deciding what “good” looks like across diverse local contexts, while remaining accountable to statewide commitments.

We also discuss why “measuring what matters” is a safeguarding task. In recent evaluation work we observed that indicators can unintentionally shift attention, create compliance behaviours, redistribute decision rights, and generate cultural load. In this session we outline design choices that mitigate these risks, including co-design checkpoints, minimum evidence standards, and using indicators as prompts for shared interpretation rather than as league tables.

Participants will leave with an adaptable template for developing culturally meaningful indicators and outcome measures, and examples they can translate to their own settings and evaluation partnerships.

Chair

Deb Moyle

Speakers

Phillip Belling

Senior Evaluator, Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, NSW Department of Education

Talk to me about evaluation that transforms lives and enables social change. I’m interested in realist, developmental, embedded and responsive evaluation; evaluation in complex education systems; evaluation capacity building; and how we make credible evaluative judgements about... Read More →

Wednesday September 16, 2026 11:00am - 11:30am ACST
Rooms 1+2 Stokes Hill Rd, Darwin City NT, Australia

Ethics and integrity

Format Short paper
Audience Level Foundational, Intermediate
Industry Community and social services, Not for profit Philanthropy
ID 230

aes26 International Evaluation Conference

11:00am ACST

Deb Moyle

Phillip Belling

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