Research Basis
A
crucial underpinning of the CAPE framework is the research
literature on school change, the adoption of educational
innovations, and capacity building. The following table
illustrates how changes in schools are influenced by
three driving forces: engaging moral purpose, understanding
the change process, and building capacity. Capacity
building is in turn dependent on the extent to which
educators’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes are
changed: resources are available and utilized; educators
engage in a professional community around the innovation;
the program is coherent; and leadership is shared among
key players. Note that the professional literature addresses
innovations in general; for CAPE, the innovation is
the capacity for project evaluation.
CAPE
Conceptual Framework
Foundation
Drivers for Change in Schools
CAPE
Capacity to Apply Project Evaluation
Desired change is the adoption of formative project
evaluation practices
(Fullan, 2005, p.
5)
|
1.
Engaging Moral Purpose
Engaging teachers’ beliefs, the need or motivation
to undertake formative project evaluation (Fullan,
2005)
|
2.
Understanding the Change Process
Engendering ownership of evaluation work (Fullan,
2005, pp. 7-10; Hall & Hord, 1984; Horsley &
Loucks-Horsley, 1998; Rogers, 1995; Waters, Marzano,
& McNulty, 2003)
|
3.
Building Capacity
Collective and ongoing policies, strategies, resources,
and other actions to increase organizational power
to implement project evaluation.
(Newmann, King, & Young, 2000, as cited in Fullan,
2005, p. 40)
|
A.
Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes of Individuals
(Guskey, 1986, 2000)
|
| B.
Resources – planning documents, instruments,
management tools, and time |
| Shared
Identity Motivation to work together on evaluation
(Fullan, 2005) |
C.
Professional Community
(Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002)
|
D.
Program Coherence
(Newmann, Smith, Allensworth, & Bryk, 2001)
|
E.
Shared Leadership
(Lambert, 1998, 2002)
|
The
elements of this conceptual framework provide the basis
for thinking about building capacity for project evaluation
and about promoting changes in practice. Fullan (2005)
explains the engagement of “moral purpose”
as the activation of educators’ fundamental beliefs
about what is valuable for children and educators’
ownership of the desired change. In the case of many
educational technology projects, this means that an
important factor in a project’s ultimate success
may hinge on whether teachers believe that the innovation
will benefit their students and the extent to which
teachers see themselves playing a role in realizing
those benefits. It is equally important that the people
involved in a project understand that they are going
through a change process; the better prepared they are
for the change, and the better they understand the process
they are going through, the less likely they may be
to resist the change.
The
framework expands the concept of capacity building beyond
traditional notions of increasing knowledge, acquiring
skills, and changing attitudes to promoting and supporting
the actual use of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes,
along with the use of necessary resources. A final crucial
aspect of capacity building is shared identity or collaboration,
in which parents, students, teachers, and administrators
are mutual learners and leaders and in which everyone
has a shared vision of how the project works in order
to achieve the desired outcomes. In order to achieve
maximum effectiveness, the substance and processes of
CAPE are grounded in each of the elements of this model.
|
