Being Culturally Responsive in a Formative Evaluation of a Professional Development School: Successes and Missed Opportunities of an Educative, Values-Engaged Evaluation

Abstract

While evaluators have explored the implementation of culturally responsive evaluation (CRE), the failures of applying CRE are less often told. In this article, we use a reflective case narrative to explore our successes and failures in implementing our CRE approach, including an educative stance. We draw on a formative evaluation of a district–university partnership during its first year. Our analysis of the reflective case narrative makes transparent how our culturally responsive, educative approach was sufficient to employ culturally responsive methods. Yet, our culturally responsive, educative stance failed to provide critical midcourse feedback, which worked against the development of the district–university partnership. The lessons learned from the formative evaluation are important to draw attention to the intersections between the cultural characteristics of the evaluand and how the evaluation contributes to educative insights.