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"The racial landscape in the United States is intricate and deeply entwined with historical legacies of systemic inequalities, particularly impacting African American communities. This study researches the evaluation practices within programs specifically designed for African American communities, employing Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Culturally Responsive Evaluation (CRE) frameworks. The study focuses on the backgrounds, experiences, and identities of program evaluators engaged in these communities, seeking to understand how race influences their practices. Using a generic qualitative research design, 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted to elucidate evaluators' perspectives on issues such as race, culture, equity, and inclusion throughout the evaluation process. The findings highlighted the crucial role of identity in evaluation practice, discussing challenges and effective strategies for managing identity dynamics. The analysis also provided insight into various aspects of evaluation practices within Black and/or African American communities, including cultural context, diverse evaluation methodologies, integration of social justice principles, and strategies for enhancing evaluation. This research paves the way for future studies exploring evaluators' operations within Black ecosystems, suggesting potential areas for inquiry like purposive sampling and focus groups to capture diverse perspectives and roles. Future studies could explore evaluator competencies and roles, refining evaluation practices within Black communities."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.

"The current study investigated children's use of information about informants' cultural background and learning method to learn novel facts about an unfamiliar culture. Ninety-six 6- to 9-year-olds heard about an immersed informant (i.e., member of an unfamiliar out-group) and a non-immersed informant (i.e., member of the child's in-group) who each learned about a novel cultural practice differently (i.e., from a person vs. from a book). Children decided which informant executed the cultural practice better (i.e., correctness), which informant they would prefer to learn from (i.e., future learning preference), and how they would want to learn (i.e., learning method preference). Overall, children preferred to endorse immersed informants over non-immersed informants, but a synergistic effect emerged such that the immersed informants who learned from a person were seen as ideal for imparting information in this context. No significant age effects emerged. Relational vocabulary predicted children's performance on the correctness question. These findings are discussed in light of limitations of current selective social learning models and implications for how children learn during middle childhood."--Abstract from author supplied metadata

Coalitions have proven effective political and military instruments often adding to the legitimacy of military operations. Coalitions have not replaced traditional alliances; but they do have the ability to build upon partner capabilities, particularly regional capabilities as the U.S. increases its engagement in regions in which it has not operated extensively since the beginning of the War on Terror. Much of the work and study on coalition warfare has been in the technical arena to include creating and developing systems and networks that enable multinational communications and ease of information flow. An understanding of the social and cognitive dimensions across cultures is required to effectively lead multinational coalitions and the political purpose of military engagements. The Army should adopt the Cultural Lens Model as a framework for identifying cognitive differences among coalition partners to enable the effective application of coalition military capacity.

"After a decade of counterinsurgency, the U.S. Army faces the challenge of preparing for an uncertain and hybrid 21st century threat across the full range of military operations. As it retools for Decisive Action in a fiscally austere environment, it must determine what lessons from the last ten years of conflict have value in shaping the force. The 21st century environment may be marked by uncertainty and volatility, but a surety is that landpower will continue to be employed in the human domain and that domain is comprised of a vast, diverse array of cultures. One lesson taken from Iraq and Afghanistan is that the manner in which the army educates, trains and organizes its Soldiers for operations within various cultures substantially contributes to the success or failure of landpower employment in pursuit of national security interests. A study of the U.S. Army s organizational, education and training approach reveals uneven application and understanding of the principles of cultural capability and its employment at the tactical level. However, the successes and failures of the last ten years yield valuable insights that offer potential alternatives to organizing, educating, and training the force for its 21st century mission."--Abstract.

In this study, the researcher examined the levels of cultural awareness and knowledge among graduate students enrolled in a counseling program at Mississippi State University. A secondary purpose was to assess differences in the level of cultural awareness between Caucasian and African American graduate students enrolled in this counseling program. The study continued the work of Cottrell (2004) who examined undergraduate student's levels of cultural awareness and knowledge using the Culture Shock Inventory (CSI). Archival data from his study included a sample of 665 undergraduate students. The sample was extended to include 200 graduate students in a counseling program at Mississippi State University. The data were analyzed using descriptive and bivariate analyses, t tests, for the group of undergraduate and graduate students on their levels of cultural awareness. A multivariate analysis, MANOVA procedure, followed by eight univariate tests, was conducted to study the difference between the two groups, undergraduate and graduate students, and to determine if differences existed between African American and Caucasian American graduate students in counseling. Results from the t-tests for the undergraduate group indicated that these students had low levels of cultural awareness. The t tests for the graduate students also indicated low levels of cultural awareness. The graduate students appeared to lack knowledge of different cultures and seemed to endorse high levels of Western ethnocentrism. The MANOVA procedure indicated statistically significant differences between the undergraduate and graduate students in cultural awareness, with the graduate students in counseling having higher levels of cultural awareness than the undergraduate students. No statistically significant differences in cultural awareness were found between the African and Caucasian American graduate students in counseling. The results of the study appeared to indicate that training in counseling increased graduate counseling student's observational skills and sensitivity to behavioral cues in dealing with persons from other countries and cultures. However, the counseling students in the study appeared to retain an underlying Western ethnocentrism and a substantial cultural close-mindedness that would impede the counseling relationship when working with persons from foreign countries and other cultural heritages. Implications for the counseling training field were discussed.