Program evaluation has become an increasingly urgent task for organizations, agencies, and initiatives that have the obligation or motivation to measure program outcomes, demonstrate impact, improve programming, tell their program story, and justify new or continued funding. Evaluation capacity building (ECB) is an important endeavor not only to empower program staff to understand, describe, and improve their programs, but also to enable programs to effectively manage limited resources. Accountability is important as public funds for social programs continue to dwindle and program administrators must do their best to fulfill their program missions in ethical, sustainable ways despite insufficient resources. While ECB on its own valuable, as it can promote evaluative thinking and help build staff's evaluation literacy and competency, ECB presents a ripe opportunity for program staff to understand the principles of equity and inclusivity and to see themselves as change agents for societal transformation. In the present study, I developed, tested, and evaluated the concept of transformative ECB (TECB), a social justice-oriented approach, rooted in culturally responsive evaluation, critical adult education, and the transformative paradigm, which promotes not only critical and evaluative thinking, but also kaleidoscopic thinking. Kaleidoscopic thinking (KT) is thinking that centers social justice and human dignity through intentional consideration (turning of the kaleidoscope) of multiple perspectives and contexts while attending to the intersectional planes of diversity, such as culture, race, gender identity, age, belief system, and socioeconomic status. KT involves reflexivity, creativity, respect for diversity, compassion and hope on the part of the thinker when examining issues and making decisions. / Doctor of Philosophy / Program evaluation has become increasingly important for organizations seeking to measure program outcomes, demonstrate impact, improve programming, tell their program story, and make the case for new or continued funding. Evaluation capacity building (ECB) includes training that is important not only to help program staff to understand, describe, and improve their programs, but also to allow programs to successfully "do more" with less. While ECB on its own is valuable, as it can help program staff become more evaluation-minded and skilled, ECB presents a ripe opportunity for program staff to understand the principles of equity and inclusivity and to see themselves as drivers of social change. In this study, I developed, tested, and evaluated the idea of transformative ECB (TECB), a social justice-oriented approach, rooted in culturally responsive evaluation, critical adult education, and the transformative (social justice-related) framework. The TECB approach promotes not only critical thinking and evaluative thinking, but also kaleidoscopic thinking, which focuses on social justice and human dignity. KT involves reflexivity, creativity, respect for diversity, compassion, and hope on the part of the thinker when examining issues and making decisions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/96932 |
| Date | 18 February 2020 |
| Creators | Cook, Natalie E. |
| Contributors | Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education, Archibald, Thomas G., Harrison, Anthony Kwame, Blieszner, Rosemary, Niewolny, Kimberly L. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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