1052 - Honoring the Voices of Latine Communities through Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation

Abstract Information: Enacting culturally responsive and equitable evaluation (CREE; Frierson et al., 2010) with diverse multinational Latine communities calls for evaluators to honor culture and context by centering love, authenticity, and healing practices. This workshop is structured in three main components. Part I will provide an overview of social justice evaluation theories and foundational principles of culturally responsive and equitable evaluation (CREE) with an emphasis on Latino Critical Race Theory and contemporary indigenous praxis-oriented paradigms for working with Latine communities. Part II will focus on self-reflection exercises to assess the evaluators’ positionality as CREE agents (Symonette, 2008). Part III will guide participants through applied case study exercises in small groups.

Relevance Statement: The Latine community in the U.S. currently accounts for nearly 19% of the total population and is projected to comprise about one-third of Americans by 2050 (U.S. Census, 2021). Latines encompass a variety of cultural groups, sociopolitical identities, ethnicities, and national origins (Rumbaut and Portes, 2001). Acknowledging the growing Latine community in the U.S., it is critical to understand the complexity and diversity of the Latine culture to honor culture and context by centering love, authenticity, and healing practices. This will then provide a foundation for evaluators to use CREE to align the assets and strengths of the community members and their environments with culturally and linguistically appropriate programs and services. Implementing CREE (Frierson et al., 2010) cannot occur in isolation. It calls for engaging an interdisciplinary community of scholars in discourse around actionable advocacy, democratic principles, courageous leadership, and social justice agency that advance the knowledge of attending to culture and context. According to SenGupta, Hopson, and Thompson-Robison (2004, p.13), CRE(E) “is actively cognizant, understanding and appreciative of the cultural context in which evaluation takes place.” Recognizing the added-value of co-learning with cross-cultural evaluators working for and with Latine-serving programs, this workshop is structured in three main components to allow participants to reflect and apply CREE. In Part I, participants will reflect on the foundational social justice evaluation theories and principles of CREE with an emphasis on Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) and contemporary indigenous praxis-oriented paradigms for working with Latine communities. This component will discuss the unique cultural values and identity in relevance to Latine culture and inclusive participatory approaches. Part II will guide participants through self-reflection exercises to assess their positionality as evaluators and agents of CREE (Symonette, 2008). Part III will lead participants in small groups discussions through applied case study exercises using CREE. The facilitator will also extract from a series of evaluation projects and case studies with Latine communities to illustrate CREE in practice. In Part III, participants will have an opportunity to reflect and react to real-world case studies of missteps when working with Latine communities. Attendees will identify ways to leverage missteps by promoting a culture learning to embrace health and healing and avoid further demeaning and harming communities. The facilitator is a Latine evaluator with experience conducting Latine responsive and equitable evaluation (LREE). The facilitator will share unique perspectives and experiences practicing LREE and reflect on where the field has been and what directions it needs to take when practicing evaluation for and with Latine communities. Practical applications explore tactics attending to the unique heterogeneity of Latine culture across multiple contexts, settings, communities, and geographic regions. Participants will have an opportunity reflect on their experiences with Latine-focused evaluation planning and practice.