Moving to Genuine: Credible Cultural Competence and Stakeholder Believability

Background: Cultural competency is becoming an increasingly important concept in evaluation. The developing discussions tend to revolve around how to become culturally competent, why it is important, and how to know when it is attained. More problematically, cultural competency seems bound by dimensions of race, even though culture represents a broader scope of characteristics. Purpose: We review the current usage of cultural competence to point out its limitations and we suggest alternative ideas that can better facilitate communication about this essential topic. We look beyond the evaluation field to learn how cultural competence is handled in other disciplines. Particularly seeking to support communication between evaluation clients and evaluators, we offer strategies to engage in a dialogue about cultural issues. Setting: Not applicable. Intervention: Not applicable. Research Design: Analytic essay. Data Collection and Analysis: Not applicable. Findings: Cultural competence, as a term, is inherently limiting in its connotations, implications, and ability to bring about change. Cultural humility may be a more appropriate term. Regardless of the semantics, the basic need to communicate about the topic remains. Asking for cultural competency, or humility, as we suggest, in Requests for Proposals may be one way to start the conversation. Positioning statements and focused interview questions also may serve to generate discussion between client and evaluator. Keywords: cultural competence, cultural humility, evaluator competence, diversity, client communicatio

Moving to Genuine: Credible Cultural Competence and Stakeholder Believability

Background: Cultural competency is becoming an increasingly important concept in evaluation. The developing discussions tend to revolve around how to become culturally competent, why it is important, and how to know when it is attained. More problematically, cultural competency seems bound by dimensions of race, even though culture represents a broader scope of characteristics. Purpose: We review the current usage of cultural competence to point out its limitations and we suggest alternative ideas that can better facilitate communication about this essential topic. We look beyond the evaluation field to learn how cultural competence is handled in other disciplines. Particularly seeking to support communication between evaluation clients and evaluators, we offer strategies to engage in a dialogue about cultural issues. Setting: Not applicable. Intervention: Not applicable. Research Design: Analytic essay. Data Collection and Analysis: Not applicable. Findings: Cultural competence, as a term, is inherently limiting in its connotations, implications, and ability to bring about change. Cultural humility may be a more appropriate term. Regardless of the semantics, the basic need to communicate about the topic remains. Asking for cultural competency, or humility, as we suggest, in Requests for Proposals may be one way to start the conversation. Positioning statements and focused interview questions also may serve to generate discussion between client and evaluator. Keywords: cultural competence, cultural humility, evaluator competence, diversity, client communicatio

How do Evaluators Communicate Cultural Competence? Indications of Cultural Competence through an Examination of the American Evaluation Association’s Career Center

Background: Cultural competency is an important but under-adopted skill among professional evaluators. Yet in the transactions around job seeking and hiring in evaluation, cultural competency is a practical and common concept. How cultural competency gets communicated in those transactions may provide insights for the field.   Purpose: The purpose of this article is to identify ways job seekers and employers discuss cultural competency in order to move toward a more widely accepted way of operationalizing the concept.   Setting: The American Evaluation Association’s (AEA) Career Center Webpage.   Intervention: Not applicable.   Research Design: A nonexperimental design was used in the study. Data Collection and Analysis: Document review was the main form of data collection, where resumes and job postings on AEA’s webpage were systematically collected. They were then rated by the two study authors on cultural competency and interrater reliabilities were calculated. Content analysis was also used to identify themes in ways through which cultural competency is expressed or communicated in the documents.   Findings: Indicators of cultural competency are identified, in the context of employment seeking. The study also highlights the conditions which may have contributed to low interrater reliabilities and a larger need to develop a practical, operationalized definition of cultural competency, despite inherent flaws.   Keywords: cultural competency; evaluator competencie

Developing Strong Evaluations for ATE Projects

These presentation slides, provided by EvaluATE: Evaluation Resource Center for Advanced Technological Education, are from a two-part webinar workshop that was intended for those preparing ATE proposals and seeking assistance in integrating evaluation into project work. This workshop focused on the integral role evaluation plays in proposal preparation, funding decisions, and conducting effective projects and centers. The following topics are addressed: key elements of proposals, major reasons that proposals fail to be funded, how to address key issues of intellectual merit and broad impact, using SMART techniques to write strong goals and objectives, and using evaluation perspectives and tools to increase proposal and project quality and effectiveness.&nbsp