Graduate Student and New Evaluators
Paapa Nkrumah-Ababio, n/a
Student
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, United States
Cecilia Vaughn-Guy, n/a
Student
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, United States
Shiyu Sun, n/a
Student
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States
Location: White River Ballroom D
Abstract Information: How do practicum experiences influence their development as novice evaluators? More specifically, what are the added benefits of employing practicums embedded in transformative social-justice over other kinds of evaluation practicums? How could intentional reflection through story-telling on practicum experiences foster the development of beginner evaluators? Using story telling, this session will investigate how participation in three social justice practicums solidify graduate students’ newly-gained practitioner knowledge, and how it advances the cultural competence and social responsibility necessary to navigate the sociopolitical and ethical complexities intrinsic to evaluation.
Guided by considerations from Chouinard et al.’s (2017), our narrative reflection will seek to uncover how graduate students navigate bridging theories of social justice and critical evaluation with praxis, based on their intersectional identities and what classroom dynamics empower novice practitioners to prioritize social inequities and power dynamics within evaluation.
We will explore our individual and group experiences as eight graduate students from diverse backgrounds with considerations of the power and privilege we bring with our varying and intersecting social identities. Additionally, we will examine the discomfort of naming and working to unlearn our own inherent biases while holding each other accountable (Madison, 1992), and the practical realities of designing and implementing social justice-oriented evaluation. Our perspectives are informed by three community evaluation projects undertaken in the course, all dealing with issues of marginalization (Madison, 1992). The projects were grounded in a transformational worldview that espouses values of social justice, empowerment, and inequality (Mertens & Wilson, 2018).
Employing a semi-structured roundtable session, we will engage ideas of narrative reflection as powerful tool for learning by creating understanding of how the theories learned in the formal class setting were adapted, challenged, or aligned to our experiences in practice. And how the process in turn, transformed our thinking and informed our identities as novice evaluators. We conclude with implications for students, instructors, and practitioners in thinking about the transition from student to practitioner and how social justice-centered theories become practice.
References
Chouinard, J. A., Boyce, A. S., Hicks, J., Jones, J., Long, J., Pitts, R., & Stockdale, M. (2017). Navigating theory and practice through evaluation fieldwork: Experiences of novice evaluation practitioners. American Journal of Evaluation, 38(4), 493-506.
Madison. (1992). Primary inclusion of culturally diverse minority program participants in the evaluation process. New Directions for Program Evaluation., 1992(53), 35–43. https://doi.org/10.1002/ev.1599
Mertens, D. M., & Wilson, A. T. (2018). Program evaluation theory and practice. Guilford Publications.
Relevance Statement: In many cultures around the world, specifically in African communities, people congregate to tell stories as a medium to pass on wisdom, values, customs and myths towards reflection and community building (Slingerland et al., 2023). This proposal is targeted toward building communities of understanding and belonging among novice graduate student evaluators, and evaluation faculty members interested in the formation of evaluator identities through story-telling. This method of reflection challenges and adds to the ways that novice evaluators are trained. This is aligned with professional practice domain of the AEA competencies (AEA, n.d.). We believe that social-justice themed practicums build novice evaluators that center issues of justice and power right from the onset – and we plan to do this by telling stories of our experiences in these practicums.
This proposal is unique in that while many evaluation graduate programs involve practicums, this session explores the distinctive formation of our identities as novice evaluators through social-justice themed practicums. This is aligned with the guiding principles of the AEA that call for cultural competence of all evaluators (AEA, n.d.).
In this round-table session we will also narrate on how we managed our relationship with the organizations. This speaks to the AEA competency of interpersonal relationships which espouses values of cultural competence, communication, facilitation, and conflict resolution. Additionally, this presentation explores the experiences between graduate students of color and White-identifying graduate students in thinking through their biases when working on evaluations directed toward people of color while considering the power and privilege we bring with our varying social identities. This outcome is tied to fourth value of AEA. That is, “the continual development of evaluation professionals and the development of evaluators from under-represented groups” (AEA, n.d.). This proposed outcome has significant implications for maintaining quality standards in evaluation practice, as unexamined biases could influence the quality of the evaluation. We plan to do this by analyzing the decisions made during the development stage and drawing out the assumptions guiding those decisions. Ultimately, this session will be beneficial for graduate students who are interested in becoming culturally responsive evaluators in the future.
References
American Evaluation Association (AEA) (n.d.). Values of the American Evaluation Association. https://www.eval.org/About/About-AEA
American Evaluation Association (AEA) (n.d.). American Evaluation Association Statement On Cultural Competence In Evaluation. https://www.eval.org/About/Competencies-Standards/Cutural-Competence-Statement
Slingerland, G., Kooijman, J., Lukosch, S., Comes, T., & Brazier, F. (2023). The power of stories: A framework to orchestrate reflection in urban storytelling to form stronger communities. Community Development, 54(1), 18-37.