This statement of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) affirms the significance of cultural competence in evaluation. It also informs the public of AEA’s expectations concerning cultural competence in the conduct of evaluation.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
American Evaluation AssociationMelvin HallCindy CrustoKatrina BledsoeJenny JonesKaren KirkhartKatherine TibbettsElizabeth Whitmore
Today, policy makers, funders, and government agencies alike are grappling with the need to use resources efficiently and effectively in order to make a measurable difference in addressing some of today’s pressing significant social, cultural, and educational challenges. When dealing with such complex and “wicked” problems as global warming, hunger, substance abuse, education and skills development (including competencies in STEM disciplines), it’s not enough for an organization to deliver results that contribute only to its bottom line. Increasingly, civic and philanthropic leaders are
Adolescents face many conflicting messages and influences related to high-risk behavior. Choices confronting middle school students often have the potential for adverse effects on their overall health and well being. Montshire Museum proposes to develop an educational outreach program to allow students an opportunity to learn about key health issues in a context that is based on high-quality research and offers hands-on inquiry and self-directed investigations. The proposed educational outreach program will serve students in grades 5-8 in rural Vermont and New Hampshire schools. The project team will create four health education modules, each one related to current NIH-supported research by faculty at Dartmouth Medical School (DMS). DMS researchers will collaborate with Montshire Museum's science educators in developing the modules, connecting with students and teachers, and providing support for all aspects of the project. For each module, the project team will support hands-on classroom investigations and independent research using materials, objects and exhibits developed specifically for the program. In addition, professional development institutes for middle school health and science educators will provide science content and instructional strategies needed to successfully implement health science lessons that are aligned with national and state standards for health and science education. The curriculum materials developed for school-based programming also create opportunities for broader public outreach. Montshire's educators will adapt them for special family activities and presentations within the museum setting. The educational curriculum will be designed to provide all participants with information that will assist in making personal health decisions in the subject areas; raise participants' awareness of the ways that culture and media affect their choices; and expose participants to the interesting and relevant research taking place locally, while increasing their understanding of the diversity of health science careers and research processes. A thorough process of formative and summative evaluation will enable the project team to take an iterative approach to curriculum development and to provide the best possible learning experience for participants.
Summative evaluation plays a critical role in documenting the impacts of informal science education (ISE), potentially contributing to the ISE knowledge base and informing ongoing improvements in practice and decision-making. In response to the growing demand for capacity-building in ISE evaluation, this paper presents a framework for summative evaluation based on an extensive review of literature and research-based refinements. The framework synthesizes key elements of high-quality summative evaluation into three dimensions: (a) Intervention Rationale, (b) Methodological Rigor and
This is a handout from the Science Learning Plus (SL+) Forum held on InformalScience.org from July 6-17, 2015. It lists and describes resources about research and practice collaborations.
In this paper, we discuss our approach to teacher-researcher collaboration and how it is similar and different from other models of teacher collaboration. Our approach to collaboration employed design experimentation (Brown, 1992; Design Based Research Collective, 2003) as a central method since it yields important findings for teachers’ pedagogical practices and contributes to the research literature on teaching and learning. We use three key moments in our collaborative practice to highlight how our work impacted student thinking and learning and involved our own shifting identities as
This paper presents a conceptual framework for analyzing how researchers and district leaders perceive and navigate differences they encounter in the context of research-practice partnerships. Our framework contrasts with images of partnership work as facilitating the translation of research into practice. Instead, we argue that partnership activity is best viewed as a form of joint work requiring mutual engagement across multiple boundaries. Drawing on a cultural-historical account of learning across boundaries (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011) and evidence from a study of two longterm partnerships
Collaboration is a prerequisite for the sustainability of interagency programs, particularly those programs initially created with the support of time-limited grant-funding sources. From the perspective of evaluators, however, assessing collaboration among grant partners is often difficult. It is also challenging to present collaboration data to stakeholders in a way that is meaningful. In this article, the authors introduce the Levels of Collaboration Scale, which was developed from existing models and instruments. The authors extend prior work on measuring collaboration by exploring the
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Bruce FreyJill LohmeierStephen LeeNona Tollefson
This article is a case study describing how one science teacher makes everyday science in the community and classroom science intersect. This article is useful to help science educators relate information from home and neighborhoods to scientific content. The concept of transformative boundary objects is introduced in this article and can aid educators design projects that incorporate important science going on in their communities to foster long-term public engagement in science.
As collective impact initiatives blossom around the country, Northern Kentucky provides a case study in handling a dilemma that can spring from that growth: When multiple initiatives develop overlapping missions, members, and audiences, how can you reduce competition and increase impact? Today, Northern Kentucky's education initiatives are aligned through a backbone organization that aims to improve all youth supports, from birth to career.
Beyond explicit behavioral rules, there are typically unspoken codes of conduct present in classrooms that shape interactions between students and teachers. In this paper Donnelly, McGarr, and O’Reilly explore how the classroom norms behind these interactions can stifle or facilitate the implementation of inquiry-based science education.
In this case study, Calabrese Barton and Yang describe how a young person’s strong interest in science (specifically reptiles) outside of school went unrecognized by his school teachers and his family as an aptitude for science. The authors describe how the prevailing view of science, framed in the context of the culture of power, can narrow learners’ perceived opportunities to pursue academic or professional pathways in science.