As I begin packing for a trip to Australia for the Australasian Evaluation Society conference I realize I have no idea what the local cuisine is in Australia. What is Australian food? About the only thing that I know is Australian is vegemite, and only because of an 80s pop song. So I feel a bit undeprepared for my trip. It got me thinking about conducting evaluations in locations/areas that you are unfamiliar with. We all learn in graduate school how to utilize the methods of evaluation and we all are aware of the various evaluation theories.....but how many of us are prepared (and competent enough) to conduct evaluations in settings that we are unfamiliar with? Are we culturally competent in all situations?
You can't just ask someone if they are culturally competent....I mean who is going to say "
no I'm not"! So how do we gauge who is culturally competent and who is lacking in this area? When we are hiring an evaluator how can we ensure that they will be able to conduct a competent evaluation in our specific setting with our program clients?
For you evaluators how do you decide if you are able to conduct an evaluation in a setting you are unfamiliar with? If you take the job, how do you prepare yourself? Can we truly conduct evaluations in any setting....just by doing some research to understand the setting that it's being conducted in? I don't know...
So I need to do some research on what is Australian food and customs. While I'm not conducting an evaluation while I'm there I will be conducting a workshop at AES so I need to make sure I understand enough about my setting in order to successfully interact with my workshop attendees.
For those attending AES I can't wait to meet you all. Happy evaluating!
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