108 - Challenging Dominant Paradigms: Stories from Three Home Visiting Program Evaluations

Abstract Information: 
Bringing new voices and approaches to evaluation work can be met with resistance when funders, partners/organizations, and political conditions privilege dominant evaluation paradigms. Evaluators often find themselves balancing the need to be responsive to these conditions with the imperative to advance equity through evaluation by using approaches and methods that aim to shift dominant paradigms. 
This Birds of a Feather gathering will facilitate sharing of examples of efforts to use new approaches and elevate excluded voices in three home visiting evaluations: Maternal, Infant, Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV), Family Connects Oregon (FCO), and Home Visiting Systems Coordination (HVSC). 
Facilitators will frame storytelling using the Spectrum of Community Engagement (Movement Strategy Center, 2019) to describe key reflections and recommendations for continuing to shift dominant evaluation paradigms.Themes will include the risk of dominant evaluation paradigms reinforcing systems that advantage certain groups of people; the importance of framing the reasoning behind using new approaches with funders; and the benefits of engaging those most directly impacted by systems in the evaluation process.
Facilitators will invite participants to share their experiences, strategies for navigating barriers, and successes amplifying voices and asserting new evaluation approaches. Facilitators will also invite participants to share examples of frameworks they use, and discuss benefits and drawbacks in their use.
Materials for this session will be uploaded in advance so that participants can review proposed discussion questions, as well as the Spectrum of Community Engagement.