Stafford Hood, founding director of Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment

Culture’s pivotal role in effective educational and social assessments—and how related research findings can spark social change—will be the focus of an international conference in Chicago this fall.

“ Evidence Matters: Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment Translating to Action and Impact in Challenging Times” is the theme of the conference, being held Sept. 27-29 at the Palmer House Hilton, 17 E. Monroe St.

The 2017 conference is the fourth international symposium organized by the Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment, an initiative of the College of Education. 

According to CREA founding director Stafford Hood, the conference is unique in its definitive recognition of culture’s central role in evaluation and assessment.

Culturally responsive testing and interventions are a largely uncharted territory, but “our collective experiences as researchers and evaluators provide us with the professional and lived experiences to undertake this critically important endeavor,” Hood said.

Among other themes, conference presenters will explore cultural responsiveness as the foundation of equitable public policy, ethical challenges in complex areas of inquiry, and the practices and policies of influence and consequence in the quest for social justice.

“To address the issues our communities face—including unrest sparked by the deaths of unarmed citizens; the intensely divisive political climate in the U.S.; and persistent inequities in education, poverty, health care and rates of incarceration—it is critically important that we focus on generating, analyzing and applying substantive evidence that matters in the evaluations and assessments we undertake,” said Hood, the Sheila M. Miller Professor of Education at Illinois.

Read the full article from the Illinois News Bureau.