Table 4: Technocratic and Democratic Civic Engagement
Tension 1: Between Expert-driven and Co-created Knowledge
In assessment work, a primary tension exists between emphasizing the role of credentialed experts and a democratic co-creation involving the expertise of multiple partners (see Tension 1, “red” poles in Figure 3). When this conflict arises in practice, too often those who direct community engagement work and its assessment prefer expert-driven models. This is especially true for those whose disciplines or expertise align with dominant norms or institutions — such as those in the academy, government, or the private sector — and who regard themselves as familiar with, or indeed one of, the “experts.” For others who may appreciate and even advocate more collaborative approaches to assessment, they still may have investments in the expertise in one of many disciplines, professions, methods, or domains of inquiry (Curley & Stanton, 2011; Patton, 2018; St. John & Pasque, 2013; Van de Venn, 2007). These professionals often defend some independence and specialized capacities that they see as essential to effective assessment in a variety of contexts, from highly inclusive to more expert-driven work (Picciotto, 2015a, 2015b). At best, professional evaluators wish to stand alongside stakeholders to help them deliberate effectively, clarify values and interests, hold powerful interests in check, and help assess the degree to which the public good and just ends have been advanced.
Conversely, partners who may not have the status of credentialed experts have deep reservoirs of their own expertise about the social contexts in which they live and the challenges and opportunities they encounter. They, therefore, have important roles to play in public dialogues about the nature of a
community, whether that is in the stories a community tells or in the assessment of its assets, needs, and possibilities for change. Indeed, we argue that this base of knowledge has profound legitimacy and utility due to its historical and social rootedness in context and its nuanced and hard-won insights into
relationships of social power, ones credentialed experts sometimes do not see. This argument is not new but is part of the historic contribution of academic disciplines such as anthropology and sociology (e.g., Fischer, 2000; O’Connor, 2001; Sillitoe, Bicker, & Pottier, 2002) and of those community-engaged representatives of various professional domains, including public policy (Hajer & Wagenaar, 2003), economic development (e.g., O’Rourke, 2003), public health (e.g., Martin, 2007), urban planning (e.g., Healey, 1998), community-based agriculture (e.g., Kloppenburg, 1991), environmental health (e.g., Corburn 2005), and, of course education, to name a few. Participatory models of social research, often organized around Participatory Action Research (PAR), have long informed social science, social service, and social movements and may be traced through a long line of towering critical thinkers including Jane Addams, John Dewey, Paulo Freire, Orlando Fals-Borda, Kurt Lewin, Miles Horton, and many others. They have claimed that uncredentialed knowledge — whether it is termed “local,” “traditional,”
“indigenous,” or “populist” — has a vital place in informing and directing a just, democratic society. To these thinkers, as for many working in community settings today, the very notion of expertise requires democratization, demanding that credentialed experts (and their institutions) and those among the public, particularly those most disempowered communities, find new ways to share power and common cause.
In light of these competing perspectives about the relationships between credentialed experts and other partners, what is the appropriate role of the “expert” in assessment? Is one perspective favorable over another, or is some reconciliation or synthesis possible? How do we understand the role of experts in assessment and in light of the DEA values of full participation, co-creativity, generativity, rigor,
experts require? Under what conditions can experts help or harm our efforts to protect assessment from powerful interests that may co-opt, silence, or obscure other voices? Sylvia's story above about the advice she received from a colleague specializing in assessment illustrates this tension palpably.
Another colleague of ours, Robert Bringle, recalls a story that elucidates this as well, using what he calls the “Casper ghost” metaphor (personal communication, September 25, 2018). In his early work in and with a particular neighborhood near his campus, his expertise in community engagement was often exaggerated because of his academic credentials, leading him to prefer a counterbalancing stance of invisibility — in other words, limiting his own full participation. He was not silent, but he worried about the extent and nature of his participation and contributions. He now sees it as ironic that at the time he thought the best inference the community could make about his contribution was to not attribute anything to his presence or activities in the community, as if they did not know he was there. His
question now is whether influence should be so subtle that it is not even visible. This struggle echoes the words of another colleague, this time a community leader, who insists that we must all “bring the best we have to the group” at all times if democratic practice and the best possible decision making are to
flourish (E. Whitfield, personal communication, July 14, 2011).
We offer no resolution to this tension for all times and places. On some occasions, our commitment to the value of co-creation in democratic engagement may call us to prefer community-driven assessment with no, or possibly a minimal, consultative role for outside experts. On others, we may wish to rely upon the independent knowledge, resources, and legitimacy of credentialed experts, to call forth their
expertise. In some cases, experts can offer efficiencies and associated strategic benefits of
communicating with “expertise”-oriented administrators or funders. In these instances experts may act less as neutral brokers and more as highly skilled advocates guided by a set of principles (as in, for example, Progressive Evaluation) (Picciotto 2015a, p. 162). In still other situations we may wish to find opportunities for dialogue among experts in assessment and experts in communities, with knowledge creation and program authority shared by all involved. As Palmer has argued the difficulty may not exist with expertise itself:
Expertise itself is not the problem…. The problem lies in that little word ‘cult.’ When experts are given the ‘guru’ voice, the only voice that counts — robbing everyone else of the right, the confidence, or even the impulse to speak — probing questions are stifled, dissenting voices are silenced, and the experts go unchallenged…. We never learn how to hold tension creatively because there are no ambiguities, only claims of certainty, in the cult of expertise (2011, p. 133). To pursue dialogue, therefore, we must reject the cult of expertise and embrace a form of assessment that returns to its Latin roots of “assess” (assidere), meaning to sit beside (Stefanakis, 2002). This relationship is modeled by Dumlao and Janke and their notion of the dialectical tensions between community and campus partners that result from “distinct cultures, assumptions, practices, and constituencies” (2012, p. 151). They use the term “relational dialectics” to think about the recurring but normal tensions that occur when campus and community partners work together and find themselves in cycles of conflict, which can lead to dialogue, followed by resolution, and ultimately yielding growth in competencies and trust (Dumlao & Janke, 2012, p. 151). One example of assessment experts sitting beside community members so that they empower one another to support community transformation is told in a story of one of our survey respondents and interviewees, Myrna Martínez Nateras, Director of the Pan Valley Institute, a project of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Fresno, California.
The Pan Valley Institute: The role of expertise in assessment
The Pan Valley Institute (PVI) began in 1998. Inspired by the Highlander Research and Education Center, it strives to create “a safe place for immigrants and refugees to learn from one another and build community” (AFSC, 2018). The PVI is a nexus for grassroots immigrant leaders as they engage in “cultural gatherings, leadership trainings, thematic workshops, fellowship programs, and residential retreats to increase immigrant participation and power across California’s Center Valley” (AFSC website). Among these efforts is their flagship program, the Tamejavi Cultural Organizing Fellowship Program, an 18-month program founded in 2011 in which the participating fellows learn principles of cultural organizing and popular education. The goals are to expand artistic and cultural expression, offerings, resources, cross-cultural cooperation, personal connections, and community partnerships and, most of all, to develop cultural organizers who will promote civic, political, and cultural engagement. To accomplish this, the fellows — “teachers, artists, field workers, dancers, leaders, and organizers” — attend gatherings to reflect on the cultural history and power of their communities, learn how to organize, engage with professional artists and organizers, develop efforts to preserve and advance their cultures, use the creative arts to develop community dialogue, and share their work with the public (Kabwasa-Green, 2013, p. 1). After several years and a total of 24 fellows, the PVI and the AFSC wanted to assess the fellowship program’s relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability. To do this, they designed an assessment with two phases, an “informal participatory evaluation” and an “outside evaluation.” The first phase involved the fellows in informal reflection circles, one-on-one meetings, follow-up conversations, and community visits and interviews, all designed to inquire into elements of the program that they found most and least educational as well as resources they needed to confront challenges and to take the next steps in their work. The outside “expert” evaluation used a mixed-method of quantitative and qualitative research, including an online survey of the fellows, an onsite survey of attendees of the culminating event, and counts of participants in events organized by the fellows. To guide the evaluator, the PVI stated their goals from the outset, which were to gauge how they
enhanced their community’s organizing capacity, public engagement, cultural knowledge, “cultural balance” (navigating two cultures), sense of belonging, and cultural vitality.
The PVI was especially careful in selecting an outside evaluator who would bring academic expertise but also appropriate insider knowledge through a rootedness in the cultures of the Central Valley. They wished to ensure the evaluator could address the community the program was intended to serve and do so in a highly informed and nuanced investigation. And they wanted the evaluator to produce assessment reports that would be accessible to, and collaborative with, local community members. In the words of Myrna Martínez Nateras, “Cultural literacy and membership is key! The people need to have clear understandings of the purpose of assessment, the form, and how it will be used. The community needs to have ownership [of the program and its assessment]... and have their voices respected” (personal communication, July 30, 2018). While the assessment took a great amount of time and effort and cannot be replicated easily, it was appropriate to survey the work of six years and many
fellows, and it generated many recommendations for the improvement of the program for Central Valley communities.
The organizers of the Pan Valley Institute took control of the assessment process and ensured that the expert was willing and able to sit beside them and reconcile community values with those of her
discipline and practices. As this case helps clarify, in assessment we can make choices to advocate for or apply methods that realize our values. Making these choices involves weighing the values embedded in assessment and thinking carefully about how our work aligns with — and, we would add, challenges — the norms and knowledge regimes operating at larger scales of analysis (Mertens, 2012). The challenge — and opportunity — in DEA is to bring to light the diverse values and understandings of assessment among stakeholders and to foster processes that help reconcile them in approaches that fit the context. Collaboratively developing clarity about our values and the powers and limitations of our communities of practice is a necessary precondition not only for effective co-creation of assessment but also for
imagining the social change work it enables.