About | CREA

Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment

EQI has a longstanding partnership with the Centre for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and hosts CREA@DCU. The core mission of CREA is to generate evidence for policy making that is not only methodologically but also culturally and contextually defensible. This focus has particular resonance in the rapidly changing social and educational landscape of Ireland today.

The President of DCU, Prof. Brian MacCraith, summarised the range of recent changes in Irish education, and the importance of CREA as a response to this when he stated ‘The past two decades have seen a remarkable change in the make-up of Irish society. For the first time in our history we experienced significant immigration and this has seen us move from being one of the most culturally homogeneous countries in Europe to being one of the most diverse. This change has brought with it many challenges and opportunities and it has forced us to re-think how we do things at all levels of society. One of the areas that has experienced the greatest amount of change is education and I think it is fitting that it is our School of Education Studies who established the first international CREA office to explore the impact of these changes in the critical areas of Evaluation and Assessment.’

CREA at Dublin City University is linked structurally with CREA at UIUC and this relationship has been deepened in recent years with the appointment of Prof. Stafford Hood of CREA Illinois as an Adjunct Professor at that School of Policy and Practice, DCU Institute of Education. Both the Dublin and Illinois Centres have engaged in collaborative research examining the roled of evaluation and assessment in culturally diverse settings and much of the is work was published in the 2015 work Continuing the Journey to Reposition Culture and Cultural Context in Evaluation Theory and Practice, (Information Age Publishing)

Our ‘new’ Irish community is endeavouring to shape an identity which embraces an ethos of equality, access and inclusion for all its citizens. Education is the key to making this happen.

The intercultural aspect of education, including culturally responsive and sensitive evaluation of programmes, is a vital but easily overlooked part of educational provision. A principle aim in the design, content, delivery and evaluation of all DCU programmes is to equip and support teachers and educators during the transition to embracing a diverse, pluralist society which is underpinned by social justice. This approach will serve the common good at both an individual and collective level and will provide for sustainability now and for future educational provision.

EQI continues to prioritise research and engagement in the fields of Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment . Our Research page contains information on our two Erasmus + projects in the area:

Details of completed research projects in the area can be found at


https://www.dcu.ie/eqi/crea/research.shtml

About | CREA | EQI

Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment