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AbstractRodney Hopson shares stories about the influence of his mother and other elders in shaping his life journey as an American man of African descent in the United States and beyond. He sees how his lived background, academic, and professional interests have helped him to ask probing and unanswered questions, especially building a culturally responsive evaluation approach that addresses social justice issues in programs and in our society. His case reflects on his life passions and pursuits in helping young people, including an early teaching experience in Namibia, southern Africa, where he found an ancestral home and his deep commitment to generating pipelines and pathways in the evaluation field. See the interview document here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/ev.20285/suppinfo. Read only. This should not be used in any form without explicit permission from the author.

AbstractThis chapter, influenced by Ernest House's conceptions of justice from his Evaluating with Validity seminal book, offers two justice signposts in contemporary evaluation theory, practice, and policy. The justice turn in evaluation privileges issues of power, fairness, justice, and rights beyond practical and technical considerations. Cases and examples draw upon Housian notions of justice in advancing and making obvious how evaluation may contribute to more just practices, systems, and structures in our larger society.

Tackling wicked problems in complex evaluation ecologies / Rodney Hopson and Fiona Cram -- Ecological thinking as a route to sustainability in evaluation / Andy Rowe -- Indigenous insight on valuing complexity, sustaining relationships, being accountable / Linda Tuhiwai Smith -- Evaluating HIV practices and evidence-supported programs in AIDS community-based organizations / Robin Lin Miller -- Complex ecology in international development evaluation, focusing on women and people with disabilities / Donna M. Mertens and Arlinda S. Boland -- Creating collaborative community practices through restorative justice principles in evaluation / Jill Anne Chouinard and Ayesha S. Boyce -- Creating a sustainable and equitable food system / Oran B. Hesterman and Ricardo Millett -- Developing relevant and responsible recommendations in health policy / Crystal L. Barksdale, Rodney Hopson, Kimberly Green, Karolina Schantz, Jennifer Kenyon, William Rodick, Akashi Kaul, and C. Godfrey Jacobs -- Considering the Paris Declaration principles on aid effectiveness as a means to drive reform / Michael Quinn Patton -- Digging deeper to engage wicked problems through evaluation / Fiona Cram and Rodney Hopson

This issue coincides with the 10th anniversary of the American Evaluation Association's (AEA's) Graduate Education Diversity Internship (GEDI) program. It emphasize core decisions and developments of the GEDI program and feature key participants who have participated in and contributed to the development and implementation of the program. Together, the chapters focus on:Factors that contributed to the design and organization of the programCritical components and aspects of the program that guideIts implementation, characterized by the leadership training, mentorship and professional socializat

AbstractThe subtitle of this special issue, "We Know Your Name," is as much an homage to Stafford Hood as it is to the Nobody Knows My Name oral and archival historical project he begat (2001), laying the foundation for a set of written projects that highlight the contributions of evaluation groundbreakers before the Brown v. Board of Education 1954 Supreme Court decision. The purpose of this article is twofold: (a) to historicize and contextualize the contributions of Hood and culturally responsive evaluation (CRE), and (b) to engage in dialogue about the future of CRE, including its application among those advancing critical consciousness in and around academia, government agencies, research and evaluation firms, nonprofit/nongovernmental organizations, and philanthropy. We fulfill this purpose by identifying, naming, and explaining three shifts within evaluation discourse that we attribute to Hood's scholarship and activism within the field, with mixed results for the liberation of minoritized and otherized groups. CRE seems everywhere at the moment. Amidst its mainstreaming, diluting, and whitewashing, we see an opening for critique and resistance. Failure to critique diminishes both Hood's legacy and the critical and liberatory roots underlying CRE. This article honors the past while catalyzing the continual interrogation and resistance against the hegemony waged within and through evaluation.

AbstractThis chapter examines implications from the application of a transformative lens and the concepts of cultural competency to increase our understanding of how evaluation can contribute to the goal of improving STEM outcomes for underrepresented groups.

AbstractThe purpose of this chapter is to provide a historical framing for the development of the American Evaluation Association's (AEA's) Graduate Education Diversity Internship (GEDI) program as an outgrowth of the AEA's Building Diversity Initiative (BDI). This chapter provides historical documentation of the AEA's BDI and the origins of the GEDI program and discusses how this represents an important part of AEA's history. We discuss the circumstances that led up to the decision to begin the BDI, the organizational dynamics of bringing about the changes that BDI and GEDI stimulated in AEA and the evaluation profession, and the implications of this process for AEA's evolution as a culturally responsive organization.

AbstractEditors' notes

AbstractThis chapter is an overview of the understanding of cultural competence and context in evaluation, highlighting how other disciplines have addressed the importance of culture and suggesting the value‐addedness of culture to program evaluation and design.