Chapter 2: Counting the Ways that Brad Cousins Shaped my Thinking about Evaluation

I am fairly certain that I first met Brad Cousins at a conference sometime in the early 1990s. In my memory, we were walking in a crowded hallway, jostled by people rushing to get to sessions, and Brad was asking me about the amount and kind of data I had about the school evaluation projects I was working on. He and his colleague Lorna Earl were editing a book on participatory evaluation, and the key criterion for inclusion of a chapter was empirical data, something seriously beyond reflective case narratives. Two things impressed me. First, this was a kind person, because here he was, asking someone he’d never met about possible involvement in a writing project when his answer might well be, “No, you’re not invited after all,” but our dialogue never felt negative. Second, this was a person with a sincere commitment to rigorous data-based scholarship. He and Lorna wanted only cases that had systematic data available to provide warrant for any claims. My projects apparently met that criterion because my curriculum vitae (CV) lists a chapter in Cousins and Earl (1995). The most important outcome of that discussion, though, was getting to meet Brad, an event that launched a similar evolution of scholarly interests and over 20 years of regular face-to-face interaction at annual conferences.