Culturally Responsive Approaches to Evaluation: Empirical Implications for Theory and Practice

Jill Anne Chouinard · Fiona Cram

Sep. 2019 · SAGE Publications

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Evaluators have always worked in diverse communities, and the programs they evaluate are designed to address often intractable socio-political and economic issues. Evaluations that explicitly aim to be more responsive to culture and cultural context are, however, a more recent phenomenon. In this book, Jill Anne Chouinard and Fiona Cram utilize a conceptual framework that foregrounds culture in social inquiry, and then uses that framework to analyze empirical studies across three distinct cultural domains of evaluation practice (Western, Indigenous and international development). Culturally Responsive Approaches to Evaluation provide a comparative analysis of these studies and discuss lessons drawn from them in order to help evaluators extend their current thinking and practice. They conclude with an agenda for future research.

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Jill Anne Chouinard is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Research Methodology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is currently the Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation. Her main interests are in cross-cultural/culturally responsive approaches to research and evaluation, participatory research and evaluation, and evaluation and public policy. She has extensive experience working on evaluations at the community level in the areas of education and training, social services, health, and organizational learning and change. She positions evaluation as a catalyst for learning, collaboration, social justice and community change.

Fiona Cram founded Katoa Ltd in 2003, an indigenous research organisation that undertakes kaupapa Māori (by, for and with the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand) research, evaluation and training. Before establishing Katoa Ltd, she was a Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the International Research Institute for Māori and Indigenous Education at the University of Auckland She is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Aotearoa New Zealand Evaluation Association journal ‘Evaluation Matters – He Take To Te Aromatawai’, published by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, and has also co-edited a number of research books. She has undertaken projects for a number of organisations, including Te Puni Kokiri (Ministry of Māori Affairs), the Ministry of Health, and Ngati Kahungunu Iwi Inc. Dr Cram’s project work, publications and conference presentations on kaupapa Māori have made significant contribtions to indigenous research and evaluation both in New Zealand and within the international community.