The Role of Culture and Cultural Context in Evaluation

This volume seeks to address select questions drawn from the matrix of the complex issues related to culturally responsive evaluation.We ask should evaluation be culturally responsive? Is the field heading in the right direction in its attempt to become more culturallyresponsive? We ask what is culturally responsive evaluation today and what might it become tomorrow?This edited volume does not promise to deliver answers to all most or even many of the complex answers facing the evaluationcommunity regarding the role of culture and cultural context in evaluative theory and practice. This is not a scientific undertaking. We arenot ready for concerns with prediction explanation or control. We are ready for serious explorations however. Even if the evaluation communitycannot articulate the necessary and sufficient conditions for a culturally relevant evaluation it does know several of the desiderata.Our concern and the direction of this volume has been reflections of evaluation theory history and practice within the context of culture withillustrative examples.