Remembering Carol Weiss

Carol Weiss was my doctoral dissertation advisor, and if I have ever produced useful evaluations, I have Carol to thank. She turned a naive teacher who distrusted evaluators and evaluations into what I hope is an ethical evaluator. She revealed a new side of evaluation for me: that evaluation is meant to provide useful information to improve programs. From Carol, I learned that theory and practice work together; that context and criteria count; and that knowledge comes in many forms and can be used in varying ways. A veritable annotated bibliography herself, she directed me to read and read more and thus opened my eyes to multiple perspectives. Carol was far more than a mere doctoral advisor—she enlightened my world. I began my doctoral program with both feet planted firmly in practice. I was frustrated with the great disembodied researcher defining what best practices I should be using. Research studies hardly seemed relevant for my classroom, my programs, my school, and my community; their findings did not address our problems or issues, and their solutions were not likely to work for students in my classes or youth in my programs. Researchers’ pronouncements seemed based on perceived realities from mere moments of observation or gross generalizations. Research knowledge was simply not useful. So why did I seek a research degree? Because I hoped to legitimize my voice as a practitioner. And because I wanted to discover useful knowledge. Near the end of my first year, a professor suggested I explore an applied research such as program evaluation. Studying applied research sounded promising; would this more practical form of research offer insight into production of useful knowledge? Still, I was skeptical about evaluation since those conducted on programs I had worked in seldom produced any findings we could directly use. In fact, I considered evaluators to be evil executioners who decided the fate of programs, usually with little input from those of us doing the work. Could any evaluation generate useful knowledge? Then I met Carol Weiss. She had arrived at the Harvard Graduate School of Education that year (1978) as a senior researcher, coming from the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University. There, with colleagues and students, she had promoted research utilization as a field of study. Other Harvard faculty who had heard me rant about knowledge use sent me her way, and our first conversation confirmed that she was a perfect match for me. Because she was not yet a faculty member, I sought special permission to add her as advisor, and over the next years, she showed me that knowledge and use are one, that evaluations could produce evidence with power to influence change and make a difference in people’s lives. Evaluation could be useful. Carol suggested that my questions were limiting my thinking; she said, ask not what is useful knowledge? Can research produce useful knowledge? Instead, she tweaked my questions to consider What is knowledge? How is it produced? Who uses it—and how? Carol believed that knowledge is the use of information or evidence; to know is to use. Thus, what people do with the information