Hi there AEA friends! Have you been trying to figure out the best ways to build trusting, equitable relationships in evaluation with diverse communities and foster an inclusive environment where all voices are valued? Have you felt your approaches to evaluation have gone under-recognized or under-valued? So have we! We are Julie Poncelet and Jude Kallick. We are independent consultants working with programs that serve diverse communities with multiple intersecting identities and challenges. Drawing from the wonderful and varied approaches and lenses to support our work – such as, culturally responsive and racially equitable evaluation (CRRE), community consulting in evaluation, trauma-informed evaluation, transformative evaluation, feminist evaluation, and more – we have observed each approach’s unique contributions to the field and how they fit together to foster a more inclusive environment where all voices are heard and meaningfully integrated into the evaluation process.
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To enhance diversity, sustainability, and the continued exploration of ways to thoughtfully improve our efforts, we have designed a user-friendly “Evaluation Journey” to support evaluators to develop more transformative, equitable, and harm-reduction evaluation processes. We drafted some preliminary reflection questions for evaluators based on our distillation of the core commonalities across these approaches and lenses to guide colleagues along an evaluation process journey with seven distinct stops, from pre-process considerations to doing the work and post-process reviews: (1) Preliminary Understanding of Project Needs, (2) Defining and Contextualizing the Evaluation Project, (3) Collaboratively Planning, (4) Gathering Information, (5) Making Meaning of the Information Gathered, (6) Taking Action, and (7) Post Evaluation Project Reflections and Assessment.
Throughout this “Evaluation Journey,” we recognize the different aspects of our own privilege in the current power dynamics and seek to inspire others to consider ways to elevate historically underrepresented voices and fresh perspectives in the evaluation. For example, we highlight the integration of lived experience consultants at each of the 7 stops throughout the entire evaluation process, recognizing the importance of different types of expertise and equally valuing the know-how of all team members. We also carefully consider the impacts of the work on the evaluation team members and the importance of developing processes to foster a supportive team where all team members feel safe and grounded within the team and their work.
Check out our more detailed image of the journey here. We see this as continually evolving as the field and our collective experiences expand. As this is a work in progress, we encourage you to share your thoughts. How is this helpful? Where are opportunities for deeper learning and reflection? What more or less would you like to see? Your insights are crucial in shaping this journey to be more effective and inclusive.
The American Evaluation Association is hosting International and Cross-Cultural (ICCE) TIG Week with our colleagues in the International and Cross-Cultural Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our ICCE TIG members. 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. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.