For Immediate Release:

Sunday, February 17, 2019

Greetings! This is Darla Scott and I participated as an AEA 2018 MSI Fellow.  I also enjoy serving as an Assistant Professor in the School Psychology program at Bowie State University. At Bowie State University, we maintain a specialist-level three year NASP-approved program that focuses on creating culturally competent school psychologists, and I have the privilege of teaching the research courses in our program.
During Evaluation 2018, the MSI Fellows presented, “Teaching Culturally Responsive Evaluation: Theory, Practice, and Reflection”, which focused on the curricular integration of culturally responsive evaluation and CRE learner experiences.  I contributed by examining participant reflections on learning about culturally responsive evaluation.  This qualitative data essentially highlighted the importance of project-based, culture-laden activities with real-world examples and applications. It also emphasized that novice learners experience less anxiety and confusion than more professional learners with limited prior exposure to CRE.  Based upon this feedback and as a final project for my MSI Fellowship, I designed hands on learning exercises to expand my current program evaluation module in our Research Methods and Statistics in School Psychology course.  I will share a few course enhancements used to redesign this course.
For the program evaluation module, scholars independently devise an evaluation plan for an actual educational program.  To enhance this unit, more details about the community demographics and culture were included about the assigned program.  Further, the students were required to plan specific community engagement events to involve the stakeholders (both the powerful and potentially marginalized groups) in the evaluation planning process.  Finally, I developed two role-play exercises with reflection for this module: (1) a mock community engagement event; and (2) the stakeholder evaluation presentation.  For the mock community engagement event, students take different “roles” such as students, teachers, or parents, and pose questions or make suggestions for the design of the evaluation from that lens.  For the stakeholder evaluation presentation, the scholars are required to present their logic model and evaluation plan as the “evaluator” to the “stakeholders” that are enacted by their classmates who are tasked with listening and posing questions with an assigned perspective. Both of these role-play exercises conclude with a time of discussion, reflection, and feedback.  These course enhancements were piloted and well-received by my students during the fall.
Rad Resources:
Great summary of the history and conceptualization of CRE  – Hood, Hopson, & Kirkhart (2015). Culturally responsive evaluation.
Great framework for approaching the teaching and learning of CRE – Boyce & Chouinard, (2017). Moving beyond the buzzword: A framework for teaching culturally responsive approaches to evaluation.
Excellent instructional resource for teaching CRE – Bowen & Tillman, (2015). Developing culturally responsive surveys: Lessons in development, implementation, and analysis from Brazil’s African descent communities.
Practical Example for teaching about CRE – Boyce (2017). Lessons learned using a values-engaged approach to attend to culture, diversity, and equity in a STEM program evaluation.
 
The American Evaluation Association is AEA Minority Serving Institution (MSI) Fellowship Experience week. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from AEA’s MSI Fellows. For more information on the MSI fellowship, see this webpage: http://www.eval.org/p/cm/ld/fid=230 Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.