Abstract
This article offers a nuanced exploration of positionality within culturally responsive evaluation, emphasizing its significance in relational practice, particularly for evaluators of color operating in predominantly white contexts. By broadening the concept of identity to encompass physical characteristics, the authors deepen the discourse on how positionality shapes relationship-building. Rooted in case studies of Black-centered educational initiatives, this session provides critical insights into how evaluators' identities impact power relations with marginalized communities. This work is an important contribution to advancing equity and social justice in evaluation practice.
Introduction
Examining influences of positionality has increasingly gained attention in social science fields including evaluation (Secules et al., 2021). Evaluators often bring themselves and their lived experiences to the evaluations they undertake, which should include an exploration of their positionality concerning the various shareholders in the evaluand. Culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) advances considerations of positionality and reflexivity as necessary for helping reduce inequities and improve the lives of communities that are historically marginalized and excluded (Thomas & Bledsoe, 2023). Critical examinations of hidden and apparent identities help reveal inherent complexities of positionality in evaluation that are relevant in CRE when thinking about the multitude of ways in which identities for evaluators of color can impact an evaluation, the limitation of environments to represent their positionality, and the risks associated with disclosure and transparency of it (Gani & Khan, 2024). For example, in recent years the experiences of evaluators of color have been shared (Avent et al., 2024); however, there remains limited scholarship on the evaluation practices of Black evaluators. This article aims to answer calls for greater literature on the evaluation experiences of evaluators of color (Aponte-Soto et al., 2024; Boyce et al., 2023; Reid et al., 2020) and the role physical traits of positionality play in their CRE practice. The ways physicality can be leveraged are culture and context dependent and merit our attention as their salience is dependent on which culture we are being responsive to. Physical positionality also serves as an outlet for evaluators of color to address the role of race and racism in evaluation theory and practice, expanding the conversation beyond individual attributes to systemic inequities. In this article, we reflect on components of our physical positionality—including height, weight, hair style, skin tone, and perceived age—and its influence on both the relationships with different shareholder groups and our effectiveness in conducting CREs. We focus on the selected elements because, in the context of the United States, they are easily observable factors that can contribute to our ability to increase rapport or dispel misconceptions about how Black evaluators should look. We provide case examples and then consider how the generally unconsidered aspects of physical positionality can be resources or barriers to various constituencies within the evaluand.
Author Positionalities
We want to first emphasize the unique position of the authors having direct academic and relational ties to Dr. Stafford Hood, and his impressions made on our evaluative thinking, practices, and spaces through his founding of the Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA) located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Hood, 1998, 2004). Next, in congruence with seasoned Black evaluators drawing on awareness of “self in context” and “self as instrument” (Symonette, 2004), we, the article authors, identify as three Black evaluators situated in a predominately White academic space, committed to advancing social justice with communities often marginalized (Avent et al., 2024). While we share these characteristics and commitments, parts of our positionality and physical attributes differ: My name is Anthony B. Sullers Jr. I am a Black man, son, and brother from the Southside of Chicago, IL, who serves as a postdoctoral research associate at CREA. I fully recognize my physical presence as a tall, athletic-built Black man with a doctorate and a contextual foundation immersed in the cultures of my city, my university, and my fraternity have on my evaluation practice. I believe that my Blackness, my education, and my representation of manhood have collectively afforded me the privilege of becoming a CRE scholar. I am Cecilia Vaughn-Guy, a doctoral candidate, who is a daughter, sister, friend, and other-mother working as a research assistant at CREA that hails from Cleveland, Ohio. I am an athletically built, petite statured, visibly tatted and pierced Black woman who appears younger than my age. I am a brown-skinned woman with yellow and red undertones whose color gets deeper in summer months. I center my Blackness and womanness because while I carry it with pride, I am painfully aware of how the presently prevailing sentiment about diversity, equity, and inclusion in the United States is that both of these physical attributes make me less qualified. In my assessment, how I look has had an indelible impact on the lens through which I approach evaluation research, theory, and practice. I am Cherie McNeill Avent. I identify as a Black abled-bodied, cisgender, married woman, mother, sister, friend to many, and southern girl from North Carolina. I am a faculty member in the department of Educational Psychology and a faculty affiliate with the CREA. I am under the age of 45, average height, with no visible tattoos or markings, and typically wear my hair pulled back. I am acutely aware of my womanhood, Blackness, and age when I enter evaluation and research spaces; knowing those attributes can directly influence interactions with shareholders.
Case Examples
In this section, we highlight case examples of Black-centered educational programs situated within a Midwestern school district and how physical attributes of our positionality influenced our CRE evaluation practice. The first case is drawn from the evaluation of a wraparound support service program within a local school district. The second case is drawn from a needs assessment of a predominantly Black and Brown STEM academy. Below, we provide brief information about the evaluation context and then illustrate how our physical positionality served as a resource or barrier to the evaluation.
Case 1: School District's Black Youth and Families-Centered Wraparound Services
Program Evaluation Context Overview: In 2021, Sullers led an external evaluation for a partnership between a school district and its local city government. The program aimed to improve the quality of life for Black K-12 students and their parents with the following goals: (1) bringing families from crisis, (2) creating hope to change lives, (3) providing academic support to increase academic achievement, and (4) co-create college and career goals with parents and students. It was specifically tailored to reflect on the challenges, disappointments, and frustrations shared by Black youth and families over the years. Additionally, the program offered wraparound support services and additional resources to help support its goals.
Positionality reflections: In this example, both Sullers and Vaughn-Guy served on the evaluation team. For Vaughn-Guy, her physical smallness helped her serve as a foil in comparison to the co-evaluator's larger physical presence. Where Sullers took up space with a large voice and body, Vaughn-Guy could claim space in-between. Furthermore, she let her physical smallness help offset the gravity and weight of the questions asked during interviews, which made the interview feel more like a conversation. She also used her tone of voice to affirm interview participants. For Sullers, he drew upon his physical attributes as a conflict resolution tool used to facilitate peace, calmness, and understanding during potential moments of high volatility. His physical stature, along with the tone and timbre of voice presented him as a comical yet stern Black male figure to various shareholders. Sullers used this approach to comfortably discuss the role of power with shareholders throughout the evaluation process to ensure they would not be penalized for sharing their stories. More entrusted engagement resulted allowing him to effectively share about the appreciation, challenges, and frustrations of Black youth, families, staff, and administrators in the program. In this case study, trust and credibility were evident in the familial bonds Sullers and Vaughn-Guy developed with shareholders over four years of evaluation. Parents shared vulnerable accounts of their experiences with the school district, particularly around how their sons were treated, and entrusted us with information not formally recorded in our reports. This trust was grounded in the cultural and relational bridges established by the program staff, who connected us with parents and reinforced our credibility within the community.
Case 2: A Transformative Needs Assessment for a Predominately Black and Brown STEM Academy
Program Evaluation Context Overview: In 2022, as part of an external evaluation team, Vaughn-Guy and Avent developed and implemented a needs assessment for a STEM academy serving predominantly Black and Brown youth in grades K-5. Administrators had concerns about student STEM engagement and wanted to create an enrichment program rooted in project-based learning and cultural responsiveness for fourth- to fifth-grade students and teachers. The evaluation team was sought out to provide feedback on current Academy assets and barriers, as well as seek parent, student, and teacher perspectives on future STEM programming and equity.
Positionality reflections: Vaughn-Guy leaned on her Blackness and womanness to help recruit Black parents for onsite interviews. For example, she used her womanness to approach other women, their partners, or guardians when walking with their children at the school to ask whether they would consider participating in an interview. Vaughn-Guy made sure her presence was welcoming, before inviting parents to engage with needs assessment that would add a bit more time to an already long day. Avent was visibly pregnant at the time of this project. In meetings with academy administrators, Avent's pregnancy and physical well-being were often the first topic of conversation. On the one hand, the subject of her pregnancy appeared to generate a relational connection between the evaluation team and administrators who themselves worked with and had young children. Avent recognized that her position as a faculty member could create tensions because of the broader mistrust and perceived power imbalances between community and university. Therefore, the welfare of youth served as a point of unification. The conversations beginning with her pregnancy felt acceptable because she wanted to foster openness. On the other hand, as a soon to be mother of a Black child, Avent leveraged the subject of her pregnancy with administrators to discuss centering the experiences of the children and families as the major priority of the evaluation. Additionally, when on-site to recruit, Avent's physical traits of pregnancy, race, and gender identity fostered early connections with parents that resulted in their willingness to talk with the evaluation team about their perspectives of the education at the academy. In this case, we recognized trust and credibility through parents’ willingness to share personal stories and voice concerns, moving beyond surface-level interactions. These exchanges reflected the kinds of relational connections Vaughn-Guy and Avent fostered through their visible identities, signaling parents’ comfort with their role as evaluators.
Discussion and Conclusion
CRE's call to consider the multiple dimensions of culture and their impact on relationship building (Hood et al., 2015) made us wonder how our respective physicality contributes to our positionality. Our case examples illustrate the multifaceted nature of positionality in evaluation and the ways in which our intersecting and physical identities were assets for genuinely addressing culture and context within Black-centered educational spaces; ultimately, influencing how we engaged with communities, the questions asked, methods used, and implementation of our evaluation processes (Thomas & Bledsoe, 2023). We have learned valuable lessons about positionality based on our experiences. First, physical positionality can deeply inform our interactions, power dynamics, and rapport-building as Black evaluators committed to CRE. Although both cases occurred in predominantly White spaces, we were Black evaluators working with programs primarily serving Black families. Our physical positionality had implications for how we interacted with the families and program leaders. In these spaces, our Black skin served as a type of capital, whereas other racial identities may have marked us as “other.” While our skin tones helped to grant us access, our positions as outsiders to the culture required our intentionality around remaining curious and seeking an understanding of the culture, we were brought on to evaluate. Second, physical positionality in CRE requires special attention to the “micro” or “sub” cultures within the evaluative milieu. Due to length constraints in this article, we do not go into detail about how piercings or selected clothing attributes to physical positionality, but these are not negligible considerations. Coupled with our respective skin tones, there are assumptions that may be consciously or subconsciously made about our education, backgrounds, and values. Even though we entered primarily Black spaces, awareness of how assumptions impact our reception did inform how we leveraged those aspects of our physical positionality to navigate those spaces, including our ability to challenge and dispel stereotypes of what a Black scholar, researcher, or evaluator looks like. Ultimately, as culturally responsive evaluators, we are aware that any part of our physical appearance—from the way we dress to the body decorations we may have—is a factor that informs the evaluation process. Third, our collective evaluation scholarship, practice, and positionality require continued recognition, examination, and interrogation of issues of power, privilege, and intersectionality. For example, we acknowledge that as Black evaluators, regardless of stature and personality, our presence is often perceived as intimidating, reflecting broader stereotypes that create challenges for Black people across academic, professional, and personal spaces. Focusing on physical positionality promotes a dynamic that allowed each of us to be mindful of the complexities of being a Black in evaluation broadly, in higher education contexts, and in the world. Ultimately, through the conceptualization of physical positionality, we work to transform this complexity into a strength that advances justice-oriented and CRE practice. We close with the following guiding questions for evaluators to consider in their practice: (1) In what ways does your physical positionality influence how you engage communities and how they respond to you? (2) What opportunities and barriers arise for evaluators and evaluation when physical positionality is examined?
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
