Abstract:The intersection of ethnicity, class, gender, and race and attention to advocacy, inclusion and equity have never been more enmeshed with program evaluation than is the case today. Sponsors of evaluation and evaluators seek guidance on how and when to embrace these issues in the populations impacted by programs under review. Those newly sensitized to the importance of context and culture expect evaluation to rightly manage inquiry to produce results reflective of multicultural validity and equitable impacts. W… Show more
“…A praxis that models, transforms, and sustains an approach to increasing the number of Indigenous evaluators, and elevating their work, must go beyond the “metrics of compliance” (Dhaliwal et al., 2020, p. 5), adopting a kinship system that embraces resiliency, self‐efficacy, Indigenous knowledge, and cultural humility, rather than the status quo, as metrics of compliance. As Bowman (2021) emphasizes, changing this harmful dynamic of compliance needs to happen within the following three contexts: education, practice, and behavior of evaluators.…”
In this chapter, we reflect upon the historical context and intersection of kinship and its relationality to Indigenous evaluators and their path to the evaluation profession. Indigenous evaluators with Indigenous lens perspectives are crucial to the field of evaluation. Our ability to ensure the success of current and future Indigenous evaluators requires that we reflect and examine both evaluation and Indigenous experience through an Indigenous lens. Our narrative concludes with suggestions that we move past the status quo of evaluation learning and teaching and embrace the concept of kinship as a component of addressing this complex and challenging issue within the field of evaluation.
“…A praxis that models, transforms, and sustains an approach to increasing the number of Indigenous evaluators, and elevating their work, must go beyond the “metrics of compliance” (Dhaliwal et al., 2020, p. 5), adopting a kinship system that embraces resiliency, self‐efficacy, Indigenous knowledge, and cultural humility, rather than the status quo, as metrics of compliance. As Bowman (2021) emphasizes, changing this harmful dynamic of compliance needs to happen within the following three contexts: education, practice, and behavior of evaluators.…”
In this chapter, we reflect upon the historical context and intersection of kinship and its relationality to Indigenous evaluators and their path to the evaluation profession. Indigenous evaluators with Indigenous lens perspectives are crucial to the field of evaluation. Our ability to ensure the success of current and future Indigenous evaluators requires that we reflect and examine both evaluation and Indigenous experience through an Indigenous lens. Our narrative concludes with suggestions that we move past the status quo of evaluation learning and teaching and embrace the concept of kinship as a component of addressing this complex and challenging issue within the field of evaluation.
“…In recent years, this has also included advocate (Reid et al., 2020) and social changemaker (Mertens, 2002). The call for adopting the roles of advocate and social changemaker has increased, not just from society itself but also from within evaluation (Neubauer et al., 2020), as marginalized groups and their allies rise in the fight against oppression and unjust systems that operate from power and privilege.…”
Section: Identity Roles and Biasmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The result is identifying the thin line between the evaluator of APC and the evaluator as an advocate. Additionally, some in the field (Neubauer et al., 2020) have called for evaluators to take on the role of advocate and activist to incite social change, which only increases the contention and complexity between the evaluator role and identity.…”
Advocacy and policy change evaluators navigate uniquely complex environments, made up of layers with many moving parts, and are actors typically in highly political spaces. Evaluators bring their unique components to the evaluation in the form of values, biases, and belief systems that are continually constructing the identities they take on within these environments. In turn, those identities influence which roles evaluators will take, such as collaborator or advocate, and bring biases that have the potential to impact their behavior and decision‐making as they evaluate advocacy and policy change endeavors. The authors of this article discuss how evaluator identity, role, and bias can impact advocacy and policy change evaluation; as well as describe how power and privilege may show up in advocacy and policy change evaluation praxis. The authors then challenge the reader to engage with teachings from Indigenous Evaluation practices that are naturally grounded in advocacy principles and employ reflexivity as a means of ensuring that their work is culturally responsive and supports the minimization of unintended harm. Finally, the authors present a reflexivity framework with the hope that this will support advocacy and policy change evaluation practitioners to be more intentional in how they critically reflect on their work, the layers of complexity in advocacy and policy change, and how their values and biases might be impacting their evaluation practice. The reflexivity framework serves to support the practice and incite further discussion on the use of reflexivity as a normal part of advocacy and policy change evaluation.
“…(p. 283) Culturally responsive evaluation is recognized as starting toward the end of the 1990s (though instances of evaluations using principles that are part of this approach occurred as early as the 1930s), and stemmed from work conducted in education, which focused on cultural responsiveness in assessment and pedagogy (Hood, Hopson, & Kirkhart, 2015). More recently, explicit attention has been given to the role of evaluation in promoting social justice in society (Mertens & Wilson, 2019;Neubauer et al, 2020;Symonette, Miller, & Barela, 2020). Several evaluation approaches, including Deliberative Democratic Evaluation (House & Howe, 2004), Transformative Participatory Evaluation (Mertens & Wilson, 2019), and Values-Engaged Educative Evaluation (Greene et al, 2011) explicitly seek to promote social justice and human rights through conducting evaluation in a manner that is attuned and responsive to power differentials and systemic inequities (Mertens & Wilson, 2019).…”
Section: A Brief History Of Professional Evaluation Practicementioning
Evaluation and evidence-informed decision making are central to public health practice. In recent decades, the professional discipline of evaluation has experienced tremendous growth that can be leveraged for use in public health. To meet the growing need for program evaluation training, the National Asthma Control Program presents the e-textbook Planting the Seeds for High-Quality Program Evaluation in Public Health. This free e-textbook is designed to help public health students and professionals understand evaluation approaches and techniques to improve public health programs.
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