4.
Outcomes: Goals and Objectives, and
Their Relationship to Strategies
Because
distinguishing among Goals, Objectives, and Strategies
is often a source of confusion among evaluation planners,
this section expands on the definitions from earlier
sections of this CAPE guide.
Critical
Examination of Project Goals
Although
most school stakeholders are able to easily explain
what they believe to be the goals of education, defining
goals for education projects can be a challenge.
First,
policy statements and the legislative actions that fund
projects typically impose predefined "goals"
on school- or district-level initiatives, making it
necessary that the Goals of a given project be compatible
with those expected by funding agencies at higher levels.
Further,
the ultimate desired outcome of an education activity
often is defined in terms of increased student achievement.
This presumption can pose significant challenges when
evaluating a project that is just one part of an ongoing,
integrated education effort. This is a problem particularly
if the theories driving project design expect that project
Strategies will result in some outcome, which will influence
some further outcome, which results in yet another outcome,
which eventually has a positive effect on student learning.
Teacher
professional development is perhaps the most common
example of this dynamic. Any professional development
effort moves forward on the logical proposition that
(a) teachers do not already possess the specific knowledge,
concepts, skills, processes, or dispositions being provided;
(b) that they will acquire the specified knowledge and
skills by participating in professional learning activities;
(c) that they will then apply these new learnings in
their classrooms; (d) that their teaching practices
will subsequently change; (e) that student activities
will then be different than they were previously; (f)
that student engagement, motivation, and behaviors will
improve; and ultimately, (g) that the student learning
will be improved in a measurable way.
If
the project being evaluated applies a strategy of providing
professional development for teachers, student achievement
is several levels logically removed from those activities.
It might be that, while changes in student behavior
will be evident in one year, any anticipated positive
impact on achievement may not.
Finally,
these degrees of separation may be chronological in
addition to theoretical: It might simply take a long
time for changes to propagate through to student learning.
It may be necessary for evaluators and project managers
to explain how their local implementation makes progress
toward a larger program goal but might not actually
achieve it.
Wording
Project Goals
It
is often helpful to examine draft Goals for semantic
clues that may clarify or make less distinct the outcome
actually intended by project designers.
As
has been mentioned previously, Goals should be worded
in terms of new skills, knowledge, or attitudes for
stakeholders or as changes in conditions bearing on
the project, rather than as activities. Consider the
following two examples:
Example
1 - Teachers will communicate with parents using appropriate
information and communication technologies.
Example
2 - Teachers will have the skills and knowledge necessary
to select and apply appropriate technologies to communicate
with parents.
Example
1 could well be a strategy intended to further some
additional outcome, while Example 2 is stated clearly
in terms of the attainment of new learning for teachers.
The latter presumes that they do not already have those
skills and knowledge while in the former, if they do
possess them, they need only apply them.
Neither
of the examples is inherently "right," but
the language of the second is more specific if it is
intended to define an outcome.
Objectives
All
of the cautions described for Goals above apply equally
to Objectives - smaller outcomes, the sum of which make
are expected to result in project Goals.
After
Objectives from the logic map have been re-examined
and clarified as necessary, it may be useful to translate
each into the form illustrated in the example Objective
Planning Worksheet (PDF). Use the Microsoft
Word document template to translate Objectives from
theory - as defined in the logic map - to a form that
will usefully guide evaluation planning.
Simply
cut each objective out of the amended logic map and
paste it into the top of its own Objective Planning
Worksheet - one sheet per Objective. Leave the rest
of the worksheet blank until provided with the necessary
guidance in the next step under the formative evaluation
planning framework - The Plan: Basic Components.
Strategies
While
project Strategies are implemented in order to achieve
the project's Objectives, the satisfactory completion
of a given project Strategy is not an Objective, in
and of itself.
Ways
of establishing standards of quality for activities
will be defined in the next section but for now, revisit
the Strategies illustrated in the logic map and check
that they are worded appropriately - as processes or
perhaps as the allocation of resources. It is a much
more common mistake to confound an evaluation effort
by wording an Objective such that it may be mistaken
for a Strategy, than it is to word a Strategy so that
it sounds like an Objective or Goal. Verbs become extremely
important when examining the semantics of written Strategies.
It
may be useful for project managers and other stakeholders
to brainstorm "things that we will do as part of
the project" - as opposed to "things that
the project will do or result in" - on index cards
or sticky notes. The resulting long list of activities
are then sorted into like groups, which can then be
labeled and transplanted to the logic map.
At
this point, planners can refer to the Strategy
Planning Worksheet (example PDF) to guide completion
of a Strategy
Planning Template (editable DOC version) for each
Strategy. Again, simply cut-and-paste each strategy
into the top of its own template, leaving the rest of
the form blank for now.
The
next step will be to complete those templates by defining
the elements that will guide evaluation efforts - evaluation
questions, indictors, data collection methods and measures,
benchmarks, and the intended uses of evaluation findings.
Next > The Plan: Basic Components
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