Developing Cultural Competency to Amplify Neurodiverse Voices in Evaluation Design and Practice

Abstract Information: In this roundtable session, we present our efforts to engage in inclusive evaluation design and reporting practices when working with a NASA-funded project serving neurodiverse high school students. This presentation describes how our evaluation team has employed our learnings and the social model of disability as a stance to guide our evaluation process including during evaluation planning, instrument design and development, conducting data collection, and analysis. The presentation will also include a discussion around communication strategies with neurodiverse participants that the evaluation team considered when corresponding with program participants about the study, recruitment for surveys and interviews, as well as how the evaluation team shaped reports that center on the unique experiences of the project’s neurodiverse populations. We will also detail our experiences as evaluators and deliberate perspective shifts made when working with neurodiverse participants. The roundtable discussion will center on our work with the NASA Neurodiversity Network – also known as the N3 program – a NASA funded five-year program run by Sonoma State University with collaboration from the Education Development Center (EDC) and the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) to provide NASA resources and experiences to neurodiverse youth. The N3 program has four key objectives: 1) Increase neurodiverse learner engagement and confidence in STEM abilities 2) Increase neurodiverse learner interest in NASA-related careers 3) Increase neurodiverse competence for NASA Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) 4) Increase neurodiverse competence and NASA-related skills for informal instructors This session will be of great interest to evaluators working exclusively with neurodiverse participants or evaluators interested in designing inclusive evaluations that broaden the participation of all individuals, particularly historically marginalized populations.