Leslie Goodyear, PhD, is an evaluator and researcher who has significant experience leading complex evaluations of national programs and systems, particularly government-funded programs. She has conducted evaluations in both formal and informal educational settings that serve youth, with a recent focus on STEM education programs and programs that aim to broaden participation in STEM.
Goodyear is the associate editor of the American Journal of Evaluation, a past board member of the American Evaluation Association (AEA), and former chair of the AEA Ethics Committee. She was elected president of the AEA and will serve a three-year term beginning as president-elect in January 2017 and then as president in 2018.
During her EDC tenure, Goodyear took a leave to serve as a program officer at the National Science Foundation, where she administered national grants programs, supervised evaluation and research contracts, and developed directorate and division-level evaluation policy.
Goodyear holds a PhD in program evaluation and planning from Cornell University.
“It’s critical to help program staff understand the value of evaluation and what it brings to their programs. I’m deeply invested in building evaluators’ capacity to communicate their work to program stakeholders and the public.”
Speaking Highlights
Evaluating the Broadening Participation in Computing Alliances: Reflections and Lessons
Building a More Equitable Ecosystem for Computer Science Education: The Influence and Promise of the Alliances
Qualitative Inquiry in the Practice of Evaluation: Perspectives on Theory and Practice
Understanding Ourselves Through Organizational Self-Assessment and Learning
Evaluating Equity-Focused Post-Secondary Educational Partnerships
Media
Blog Posts
“QUAL Eval Week: Leslie Goodyear on The Importance of Asking ‘Stupid Questions’ in Qualitative Evaluation”
AEA365, February 25, 2015
“Strong PI/Evaluator Partnerships: A ‘User’s Guide’”
EDC, January 10, 2013
Selected Publications
National Research Council. (2015). Identifying and supporting productive programs in out-of-school settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Goodyear, L., Barela, E., Jewiss, J., & Usinger, J. (Eds.) (2014). Qualitative inquiry in evaluation: From theory to practice. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Trimble, J., Trickett, E., Fisher, C., & Goodyear, L. (2012). A conversation on multicultural competence in evaluation. American Journal of Evaluation, 33(1), 112–123.
Goodyear, L. (2011). Building a community of evaluation practice within a multisite program. In J. King & F. Lawrenz (Eds.) Multisite evaluation practice: Lessons and reflections from four cases [Special issue]. New Directions for Evaluation, (129), pp. 97–105.
Goodyear, L. K. (Ed.). (2007, November). Special issue on ethics in evaluation. Evaluation and Program Planning, 30(4), 392–393.
Selected Resources
The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) contracted EDC to conduct a statewide evaluation of the U.S. Department of Education’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) initiative.