Implementing Culturally Responsive Evaluation Methods: Reflections on Challenges to Traditional Understandings of Power, Validity, and Rigor

In this reflective article, the evaluation team for the NASA-funded SciAct STEM Learning Ecosystems project discusses the process we used to study four exemplar STEM learning ecosystems in regions across the US using culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) methods. We expected to follow a linear path for each of the study’s three inquiry cycles but found that this process needed to be fluid because of the culturally responsive evaluation methods employed. These methods meant we shared control with the project team in ways we had not before and had to rethink study validity and rigor. Beyond the evaluation team, this article shares reflections from the project team as well as the study’s external evaluation advisor about what it was like to participate in a study that used CRE methods.