Unearthing Healing Through Anti-Racist, Decolonizing, and Community-Engaged Methods to (Re)imagine Inquiry as Restorative Practice

• Sponsor
  Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
  $100,000

• Principal investigator
  Giovanni Dazzo
  Assistant professor, Department of Lifelong Education, Administration, and Policy

• Active since
  March 2023

Abstract

This project will support the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Supporting and Expanding the Field of Equitable Evaluation program by strengthening the adoption of equitable evaluation practices and principles among various actors in the evaluation field by promoting the acceleration of decolonized, community-based, anti-racist evaluation methods.

The purpose of this project is to establish a movement toward restorative forms of inquiry (restorative validity), whereby evaluation does not serve as an end but a means to reclaim and restore the humanity of researcher and researched. Historically, research and evaluation practices, in general, have adversely affected communities by using a deficit lens. This paradigm of researcher/evaluator as expert, which may justify little to no community engagement or validation of findings, has often resulted in erroneous interpretations and generalizations that have had harmful consequences for communities. This reorientation toward restorative validity also requires the (re)humanization of research and evaluation processes and those who profess expertise in it.

Through participatory action research and participatory evaluation partnerships, the co-researchers in these collectives will collaboratively design and produce articles, conference presentations, and policy briefs, seeking to promote and amplify new norms and practices that seek to undo harmful research and evaluation orthodoxies.