Evaluation Cultures draws upon a sample of reflections, drawn from organizational practices, nationally centered political cultures, and ethnic cultures, as a framework for understanding how culture influences the work of evaluation. Two main conclusions seem to emerge: first, that there exists no single, uniform, and homogenous national evaluation culture; second, that the idea of a unified transnational culture of evaluation is an illusion.The evaluation community includes a diverse group of professionals; a diversity that is not just represented in national or ethnic culture but also in academic backgrounds, public and private sector allegiances, and personal character. The contributors to this book represent, in part, this diversity by reflecting a range of views.Evaluation Cultures draws upon the experience of senior evaluation practitioners, who share their reflections on their practice and experience, in order to put forth challenges to purely academic analysis. Evaluation Cultures presents a consistent, if not exhaustive, attempt to give analytical and empirical sense to all of the cultures of the evaluation community.

Racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity has become of global importance in places where many never would have imagined. Increasing diversity in the U.S., Europe, Africa, New Zealand, and Asia strongly suggests that a homogeneity-based focus is rapidly becoming an historical artifact. Therefore, culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) should no longer be viewed as a luxury or an option in our work as evaluators. The continued amplification of racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity and awareness among the populations of the U.S. and other western nations insists that social science researchers and evaluators inextricably engage culturally responsive approaches in their work. It is unacceptable for most mainstream university evaluation programs, philanthropic agencies, training institutes sponsored by federal agencies, professional associations, and other entities to promote professional evaluation practices that do not attend to CRE. Our global demographics are a reality that can be appropriately described and studied within the context of complexity theory and theory of change (e.g., Stewart, 1991; Battram, 1999). And this perspective requires a distinct shift from “simple” linear cause-effect models and reductionist thinking to include more holistic and culturally responsive approaches. The development of policy that is meaningfully responsive to the needs of traditionally disenfranchised stakeholders and that also optimizes the use of limited resources (human, natural, and financial) is an extremely complex process. Fortunately, we are presently witnessing developments in methods, instruments, and statistical techniques that are mixed methods in their paradigm/designs and likely to be more effective in informing policymaking and decision-making. Culturally responsive evaluation is one such phenomenon that positions itself to be relevant in the context of dynamic international and national settings where policy and program decisions take place. One example of a response to address this dynamic and need is the newly established Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA) in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. CREA is an outgrowth of the collective work and commitments of a global community of scholars and practitioners who have contributed chapters to this edited volume. It is an international and interdisciplinary evaluation center that is grounded in the need for designing and conducting evaluations and assessments that embody cognitive, cultural, and interdisciplinary diversity so as to be actively responsive to culturally diverse communities and their aspirations. The Center’s purpose is to address questions, issues, theories, and practices related to CRE and culturally responsive educational assessment. Therefore, CREA can serve as a vehicle for our continuing discourse on culture and cultural context in evaluation and also as a point of dissemination for not only the work that is included in this edited volume, but for the subsequent work it will encourage.

An international business expert helps you understand and navigate cultural differences in this insightful and practical guide, perfect for both your work and personal life. Americans precede anything negative with three nice comments; French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans get straight to the point; Latin Americans and Asians are steeped in hierarchy; Scandinavians think the best boss is just one of the crowd. It's no surprise that when they try and talk to each other, chaos breaks out. In The Culture Map, INSEAD professor Erin Meyer is your guide through this subtle, sometimes treacherous terrain in which people from starkly different backgrounds are expected to work harmoniously together. She provides a field-tested model for decoding how cultural differences impact international business, and combines a smart analytical framework with practical, actionable advice.

Moving beyond the expectations and processes of conventional teacher evaluation, this book provides a framework for teacher evaluation that better prepares educators to serve culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners. Covering theory, research, and practice, María del Carmen Salazar and Jessica Lerner showcase a model to aid prospective and practicing teachers who are concerned with issues of equity, excellence, and evaluation. Introducing a comprehensive, five-tenet model, the book demonstrates how to place the needs of CLD learners at the center and offers concrete approaches to assess and promote cultural responsiveness, thereby providing critical insight into the role of teacher evaluation in confronting inequity. This book is intended to serve as a resource for those who are committed to the reconceptualization of teacher evaluation in order to better support CLD learners and their communities, while promoting cultural competence and critical consciousness for all learners.

Today we are seeing a new form of blended learning: not only is technology enhancing the learning environment but formal and informal learning are combining and there is self- and peer-assessment of results. Open learning cultures are challenging the old and long-practiced methods used by educators and transforming learning into a more student-driven and independent activity , which uses online tools such as blogs, wikis or podcasts to connect resources, students and teachers in a novel way. While in higher education institutions most assessments are still tied to formal learning scenarios, teachers are more and more bound to recognize their students’ informal learning processes and networks. This book will help teachers, lecturers and students to better understand how open learning landscapes work, how to define quality and create assessments in such environments, and how to apply these new measures. To this end, Ehlers first elaborates the technological background for more collaborative, distributed, informal, and self-guided learning. He covers the rise of social media for learning and shows how an architecture of participation can change learning activities. These new paradigms are then applied to learning and education to outline what open learning landscapes look like. Here he highlights the shift from knowledge transfer to competence development, the increase in lifelong learning, and the importance of informal learning, user generated content, and open educational resources. He then shows how to manage quality by presenting a step by step guide to developing customized quality concepts for open learning landscapes. Finally, several methods dealing with assessment in these new environments are presented, including guidelines, templates and use cases to exemplify the approaches. Overall, Ehlers argues for assessment as an integral part of learning processes, with quality assurance as a method of stimulating a quality culture and continuous quality development rather than as a simple controlling exercise.

Mixed Methods Research and Culture-Specific Interventions shows practicing social scientists and graduate students how to account for cultural factors when developing and evaluating psychological and educational interventions using mixed methods research. Providing a methodological basis for handling cultural influences when engaged in intervention and/or evaluation work, the book covers a range of topics, including mixed methods research, program evaluation, ethnography, and intervention design. Throughout the book, authors Bonnie K. Nastasi and John H. Hitchcock integrate illustrative examples to make more abstract content accessible. Mixed Methods Research and Culture-Specific Interventions is Volume 2 in the SAGE Mixed Methods Research Series.

The last two decades have seen an explosive increase in the ethnic diversity of the workforce, growth in international business, and the emergence of many more multinational companies. The potential for problems as companies operate across borders and managers manage in countries which have different values, norms and cultural behaviors is great. By looking at organizational psychology in a cross-cultural context, we can gain an understanding of the challenges facing organizations and business today. This text breaks new ground in introducing organizational psychology from a cross cultural perspective. It provides a foundational overview of the current major theories in organizational psychology, and illuminates the impact of cultural differences on organizational dynamics. It also makes available specific research concerning our current understandings of how these dynamics play out in particular regions and countries, such as autocratic versus democratic leadership styles in Africa and Europe or conflict management in Asia. The volume offers a welcome introduction to the topic to those in industrial/organizational psychology, international relations and management, and international business/MBA programs focusing on international issues.

This book, with contributions from expert academics, is designed to motivate both the further development of models concerned with the influence of cultural diversity on several human resource management processes and practices and the design and conduct of empirical research on the same topic.