My name is Art Hernandez and I am a Visiting Professor at University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas.
I participated in the second yearlong experience of the AEA Minority Serving Institutions Fellowship program and have served as the Director for several cohorts most recently this past year. I teach and practice Evaluation and am very interested in the operationalization of and the development of metrics related to cultural responsiveness in practice. I am a member of the Indigenous, Multicultural and La Red TIGS (Topical Information Groups).
Lesson Learned:
Evaluation theory and practice (including issues and ideas related to Cultural Responsiveness) is constantly evolving and developing. A unique academic and professional discipline, Evaluation is informed by advances in and elaborations of the “state of the science and art” of inquiry constructed from a variety of scientific and social scientific disciplines. The result is that its “expert” practitioners and theorists must be familiar with and consider diverse literature from an ever widening range of disciplines and be prepared to challenge and revise their thinking and practice. This year’s cohort recognized the need for multi- and interdisciplinary thinking in Evaluation realizing the benefits and sharing their discoveries.
Hot Tip:
“Expert” Evaluators recognize and endeavor to learn as much as possible related to the great variety of modes of inquiry recognizing the connection of this to the multiple ways of knowing and its importance as one way to assure cultural responsiveness.
Rad Resources:
Aidan Kenny (2006). Evaluation: Emergence, Mode of Inquiry, Theory & Practice. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=946402 (Retrieved 12-14-16)
Bijal A Balasubramanian; Deborah J Cohen; Melinda M Davis; Rose Gunn; L Miriam Dickinson; William L Miller; Benjamin F Crabtree and Kurt C Stange (2015). Implementation Science 10:31. DOI: 10.1186/s13012-015-0219-z
http://implementationscience.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13012-015-0219-z (Retrieved 12-14-16)
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.