I am Art Hernández, professor in the Dreeben School of Education at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. My work sits at the intersection of culturally responsive and equitable evaluation (CREE), community power, and the philosophical foundations of evaluation practice.
Restorative leadership is a relational, justice-centered approach rooted in restorative justice (Hernandez, A.E., 2025). It emphasizes relational accountability, healing-centered engagement, “power with” rather than “power over,” and a cyclical disposition of caring, knowing, and doing (Hernandez, A.E., 2026; Zehr, 2015). It is increasingly visible in community-based and community power initiatives, yet it remains under-specified as theory. That under-specification is both an evaluation problem and an evaluation opportunity, one that CREE is uniquely positioned to address in two ways.
Restorative Leadership as Evaluand. CREE insists that culture is central, not incidental to theory specification (Hood et al., 2015). Evaluating CREE-based initiatives without culturally grounding their constructs risks measuring a decontextualized abstraction. For example, in Latino/a – Hispanic communities, the theory’s core constructs find culturally specific expression, e.g.: relational accountability lives in confianza (trust earned through sustained presence) and personalismo (relationship as the precondition for legitimate action); collective identity resonates with familismo (selfhood bound to communal wellbeing); healing-centered truth-telling parallels testimonio (narrative as knowledge, witness, and repair), etc. These constructs are not translations of the theory; they are theory-constitutive. Specification should therefore proceed with the community rather than merely about it: co-defining constructs, validating indicators against community meaning, and treating cultural knowledge as evidence rather than context.
The Evaluator as Restorative Leader. The same caring–knowing–doing cycle (Hernandez, 2026) describes an evaluative stance consistent with CREE commitments to cultural competence (American Evaluation Association, 2011). Caring is relational accountability to the community, not solely to the contract. Knowing is epistemic humility: learning history, language, and power from community members as co-creators of knowledge. Doing is participatory, healing-aware practice: dialogue circles, shared sense-making, and findings returned in forms the community can use to build its own agency. Evaluating this way, our practice itself becomes an instance of the theory we are specifying – a reflexive loop in which evaluation both tests and develops restorative, community leadership.
Hot Tips
- Co-specify constructs biculturally and bilingually. For example, before operationalizing, ask community partners how confianza, personalismo, familismo, or testimonio express (or complicate) each construct, then let their answers revise the theory.
- Treat cultural constructs as theory-constitutive, not as moderators. They belong in the program theory itself, not in a limitations paragraph.
- Evaluate the “how,” not only outcomes. Power-sharing, repair after harm, and voice are criteria of merit, not process footnotes.
- Use restorative practices as method. Circles and dialogue can serve simultaneously as data collection, member-checking, and relationship repair.
- Document theory development. Each culturally grounded specification is a scholarly contribution; report it so the field’s theory grows with the community’s wisdom.
Lesson Learned
Communities do not need evaluators to validate their leadership, culture, practice, or performance; they need evaluators willing to be led, to care enough to stay, know enough to act justly, and do the work with, not for, the people whose futures are at stake.
Rad Resources
- American Evaluation Association. (2011). American Evaluation Association public statement on cultural competence in evaluation. https://www.eval.org/About/Competencies-Standards/Cultural-Competence-Statement
- Hernandez, A. E. (2025, December). Healing and Justice: The Communal Regeneration Framework. Root Change. https://rootchange.org/2026/01/12/from-the-community-power-studio-knowledge-products-in-practice/
- Hernandez, A.E. (2026). Caring, Knowing, and Doing: The Disposition and Identity of Community Power Leaders. Chapter in Olgechi E. and Hernandez, A.E. The Ultimate Guide to Community Power. (Publisher Pending).
- Hood, S., Hopson, R. K., & Frierson, H. T. (Eds.). (2015). Continuing the journey to reposition culture and cultural context in evaluation theory and practice. Information Age Publishing.
- Zehr, H. (2015). The little book of restorative justice: Revised and updated. Good Books.
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