Applying “Servingness” to Evaluating a Bilingual Teacher Education Partnership Pathway in Hispanic-Serving Institutions

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Sunday 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Strengthening Latine Bilingual Teaching Pathways Through Inter-Institutional Partnerships: Lessons From a Federally Funded HSI Grant

Abstract

Objectives
This paper will discuss how an evaluator and the Principal Investigators of the GP collaborated to design and implement an evaluation oriented to “servingness” in HSIs, as defined by Garcia (2019). We describe the academic outcomes that are of interest to the funder, the US Department of Education, and nonacademic outcomes, which while of import under a “servingness” framework, are not specified by the funder. We also focus on collaborative (O’Sullivan, 2004; Rodríguez-Campos, 2005), participatory (Cousins and Earl, 1992; Garaway, 1995), utilization-focused (Patton, 2011), and culturally responsive (Frierson et al., 2002, Kirkhart and Hopson, 2010) evaluation approaches employed, and how the approaches provided relevant findings for nonacademic outcomes. We then discuss how the evaluation supported the efforts of the GP to be “Latine-serving” in the HSI context.

Theoretical Framework
We draw on Garcia et al.’s (2019) Multidimensional Conceptual Framework of Servingness in HSIs to characterize how the evaluation elevated GP’s nonacademic outcomes, future Latine bilingual teachers (FLBT) experiences, non-FLBT experiences, and culturally relevant practices to assess the extent to which the project was Latine-serving. We contrast this approach with traditional approaches to assessing program outcomes employed by Title V HSI grants, e.g., retention, transfer, and graduation (Applications for New Awards; Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program, 2025). We then describe how the multiple evaluation approaches resulted in the increased capacity to assess the “servingness” of the GP.

Methodology & Data Sources
The evaluation used collaborative, participatory, utilization-focused, and culturally relevant evaluation approaches to provide findings about program design, implementation, and outcomes related to GP’s “servingness.” Data sources from the evaluation included group semi-structured interviews with and surveys of FLBT, one-one-one interviews with FLBT using the Most Significant Change protocol (Davies & Dart, 2005), and one-on-one semi-structured interviews of GP staff.

Findings & Scholarly Significance
Using an evaluation approach that focused on assessing “servingness,” we found that FLBT served by the GP had a heightened sense of belonging and being part of a community, and experienced reduced anxiety about asking for help and transferring - examples of nonacademic outcomes. The GP also doubled FLBTs’ interest in becoming a bilingual teacher after GP participation. These findings suggest the GP helped ameliorate the challenges the target population, students at both four-year and community college institutions of higher education, face on their college-going journey, such as successful transfer (Johnson & Mejia, 2020). For example, two-thirds of FLBT worked - nearly half of them 20–40 hours weekly. Two-thirds were the first in their family to attend college. Nearly three-quarters had a mother or guardian who did not attend at least some college (Authors, 2025).
This paper is significant because it provides examples of how evaluation of Title V Developing HSI grants can incorporate assessment of nonacademic outcomes, FLBT experiences, staff experiences, and culturally relevant practices to better assess the qualities of “servingness” at the broader HSI level, along with providing findings that can be useful for project design, development, and evaluation.

Authors

• Saul I. Maldonado, San Diego State University

• Alberto Heredia, WestEd