Conceptual foundations for measuring the implementation of educational innovations.

Abstract

This material is based on work supported by the national science Foundation under grants 0628052, 0635598, 1008569, and 1109595. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the national science Foundation. The authors are part of the research and evaluation group at the Center for elementary mathematics and science education (Cemse) at the University of Chicago. Cemse is committed to the sharing of knowledge and the creation of useful products and programs to make a positive difference for instruction throughout the nation.

Exploring critical components of an integrated STEM curriculum: an application of the innovation implementation framework

“…This work addresses important issues pertaining to the implementation of innovations in STEM education. The paper provides a much-needed description of the application of the innovation implementation framework (Century and Cassata, 2014). Beyond the descriptions provided by the framework's authors, there are few published examples of research applying this approach to study the implementation of curricular innovations.…”

“…Second, Century et al emphasize that "full implementation of all critical components is not necessarily optimal, noting that appropriate enactment varies depending on contexts and conditions" (p. 348). Similarly, Century and Cassata (2014) discuss the difference between investigations of implementation fidelity, in which evidence is gathered to compare actual implementation to a theoretical ideal, and investigations focused on innovation use. Given the broad consensus that innovations are almost never implemented exactly as intended, Century et al encourage measuring how components of innovation are used rather than focusing on fidelity of innovation as a whole.…”

“…In addition to understanding how the innovation was enacted, we were also interested in learning about any contextual factors that may have influenced why teachers and students engaged with the curriculum the way they did. For this line of inquiry, we drew upon the Factor Framework (Century and Cassata, 2014;Century et al 2012), which outlines a comprehensive set of potential factors influencing innovation enactment. These factors are organized into five categories: characteristics of the innovation, characteristics of individual users, characteristics of the organization, elements of the environment, and networks.…”

“…In their work articulating the innovation implementation and factor frameworks, researchers from CEMSE provide a number of informative examples illustrating Gale et al International Journal of STEM Education (2020) how they have utilized the frameworks to examine the implementation of educational innovations (Cassata et al 2015;Century and Cassata, 2014;Century et al 2012;LaForce et al 2016). Century et al (2012) describe how the innovation implementation framework was originally conceptualized as they sought to develop a suite of instruments to measure the implementation of K-8 reform-based science and mathematics curriculum across multiple programs.…”

Board # 78 : Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning in Computer Science: The CS-POGIL & IntroCS-POGIL Projects

“…Each activity has a 1-2 page instructor's guide with learning objectives and some preparation and facilitation notes. We will expand these guides with important structural components [17] to support instructors in varied settings, leading to broader propagation, as well as a useful model for POGIL authors in other disciplines.…”