Using a theory-based approach to evaluations allows us to forefront the assumptions that underpin causal chains from inputs to outputs and through to outcomes, intermediate states and impact. Higher Education, 70(3), 315335. What a theory of change is its definition and importance. Finally, a project team articulates the assumptions behind the above elements and the linkages between them. Attitudes encompass the individuals favorable or unfavorable evaluation of the behavior. From this perspective, a Logic Model can be conceptualized as a different (albeit more structured) format for organizing the same information that would be found in a pathway of change diagram for a theory of change. Public Administration and Public Policy, 87, 611630. Andrews, T. M., Leonard, M. J., Colgrove, C. A., & Kalinowski, S. T. (2011). Before using this tool, you should use Theory of Action, Part I. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.11-07-0061. Looking for resources on Theory of Change? The simpler, more rigid organizational structure of a Logic Model can be beneficial for a quick summary and more easily communicating with funders and other stakeholders. Dancy, M., Henderson, C., & Turpen, C. (2016). Yet this may not be apparent to their audiences. Adopting such a framework, a hiring committee may aim to see how a new hire would add to their culture, rather than just fitting in it. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 913. An introduction to ToC from Theory of Change week on Research to Action. These assumptions should be based in the prior experience of the project team and the research literature. (2015). A theory of action identifies a particular route within a theory of change, or an establishment's role in accomplishing that transformation, centred on an evaluation of how the organization may provide the greatest benefit to the change initiative. It serves as a compass, illuminating the desired goals, informing adaptations and identifying opportunities for meaningful measurement. Retrieved from Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change website: http://www.theoryofchange.org/pdf/TOC_fac_guide.pdf. Resources in Developing a Theory of Change, Key Takeaway About an Effective Theory of Change, Part One: Overview of Theory of Change Concepts and Language, Part Two: Step-By-Step Guidance and Examples, use templates to The TCSR (Woodbury & Gess-Newsome, 2002) maps out the context of efforts that aim to change K-12 teachers practices, including personal, structural, and cultural factors. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179211. The first component, perceived behavioral control, refers to the extent that an individual feels able to enact a behavior (Glanz et al., 2002). These are: Creating a social work or human services theory of change can help teams identify where logic and linkages are weak, expose biases and divergent viewpoints, and build stronger, clearer strategies. We thank Alice Olmstead, Erika Offerdahl, Isabel White, and Susan Shadle for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Here, we draw from the terminology used in the guidebook, recognizing it as one of the definitive sources for developing a theory of change. Change theories represent generalized knowledge about how change works. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X15570388. As readers advance through each step of creating a theory of change, they can use templates to Theory of Change ( ToC) is a methodology or a criteria for planning, participation, adaptive management, and evaluation that is used in companies, philanthropy, not-for-profit, international development, research, and government sectors to promote social change. By comparison, ToCs are useful at explaining whats happening (or whats not happening) higher up the log frame: the point at which outputs aremeantto translate into outcomes and goals, when change is unpredictable, messy and complicated and is often far outside the projects control. Change interventions are generally part of the change research literature, rather than being change theories themselves. Kellogg Foundation. Use of research-based instructional strategies in introductory physics: where do faculty leave the innovation-decision process? Logic model development guide: Using logic models to bring together planning, evaluation, & action. This supports the creation and implementation of an action plan, as well as monitoring of that plan. Promoting instructional change in new faculty: An evaluation of the physics and astronomy new faculty workshop. Developing well-articulated outcomes and preconditions helps a team choose interventions intentionally, as compared to a project that begins by planning its interventions and then stipulating what it hopes to achieve. We also hope to provide a starting place for researchers who are new to studying change and are grappling with how to ground a change initiative existing knowledge and contribute to our collective knowledge about how to achieve change in undergraduate STEM education. We collaborate to solve the challenges of tomorrow. The theory of change is a concept that describes and explains intervention activities that an organization undertakes that contributes to a chain of outcomes. It explores theory of change models, processes and products as well as key theory of change concepts, benefits and limitations. For example, applied to an effort to change how teaching is evaluated for promotion and tenure, the 4I framework of organizational learning suggests that a precondition to institutionalizing new structures includes individuals in a group (e.g., a department) developing shared understandings. One thing that has struck me, regardless of which donor or country we work in, is the ongoing confusion in the aid industry regarding theories of change and theories of action. Because terminology is not used consistently throughout the literature, we carefully define the main terms used when talking about a theory of change. This new resource reflects how theory of change thinking has evolved by: Documenting a groups core concepts, assumptions and expectations about change can take many forms. We define change research broadly, as any scholarship that focuses on how to make change happen. All of these outcomes would be aimed at supporting teaching over the long-term. UN Environment evaluations are structured around a project or programme's Theory of Change to assess the causal logic of the intervention and determine whether all external factors affecting outcomes . This process is focused on coherent, collective action. In order to We also propose common terminology that DBER communities could use to refer to the articulated logic of an individual project (Tables 1 and 2). A basic principle of appreciative inquiry is that organizations change in areas where they persistently ask questions, and the more positive the questions asked, the more long-lasting and successful a change effort will be (Cooperrider & Whitney, 2001). Which change interventions have been designed and revised with change theory in mind may become obvious as a team builds their own theory of change around an intervention and is faced with questions about how the suggested activities will result in the desired outcomes. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. What a useful theory of change looks like. Pingback: Three big M&E lessons Sustainable Development Praxis. CBELife Sciences Education, 14(1), ar7. The 4I model helped these researchers recognize the role of the local CIRTL leader in all four of the organizational learning processes in the 4I model. The Academy of Management Review, 24(3), 522537. W.K. Henderson, C., Beach, A., & Finkelstein, N. (2011). Methodological Brief No.2: Theory of Change Page 5 the education sector1 - identified four different research-based theories to inform the evaluation. For example, stages (1) establishing vision and (2) examining the landscape and conducting capacity analysis are envisioned as two looping and iterative processes that ultimately align a change effort with institutional priorities. Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Education and Human Resources (IUSE: EHR). Theories of change are powerful tools for guiding large-scale, complex efforts seeking ambitious goals. Article A Theory of Change is a specific and measurable description of a social change initiative that forms the basis for strategic planning, on-going decision-making and evaluation. Science, technology, engineering, mathematics. Viewing change as occurring within a complex system is important because context will influence the impact of a change intervention. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 12(1), 010110. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.12.010110. By comparison, ToCs are useful at explaining whats happening (or whats not happening) higher up the log frame. Three big M&E lessons Sustainable Development Praxis, Responding to the COVID-19 crisis inIndonesia, Leadership and localisation: How Australia could support local women to exercise influence and drivechange, Responding to the COVID-19 crisis in Indonesia. Although there are many ways that research and theory can contribute to a change effort, we focus on five that we argue are a useful guiding framework for grounding a theory of change in existing scholarly work. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The River Model includes eight stages: (1) establishing vision, (2) examining the landscape and conducting capacity analysis, (3) identifying and analyzing challenges and opportunities, (4) choosing strategies, (5) determining readiness for action, (6) beginning implementation, (7) measuring results, and (8) disseminating results and planning next steps. A theory of change is a particular approach for making underlying assumptions explicit, and using the desired outcomes of a project as a mechanism to guide planning, implementation, and evaluation. A systematic review of theory-driven evaluation practice from 1990 to 2009. Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. The intellectual roots of the theory of action are John Dewey's theory of inquiry and Kurt Lewin's formulations of action research. Hayward, C. N., & Laursen, S. L. (2018). Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. After describing the context, the team goes through a process of backwards mapping, first focusing on the end results and then working backwards to describe how one is supposed to get to those results. Elrod, S., & Kezar, A. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 6991. Single-loop and double-loop models in research on decision making. (1991). Pawson, R., & Tilley, N. (1997). Importantly, ToAs are good at explaining the bottom of the log frame. Importantly, ToAs are good at explaining the bottom of the log frame, where we can be fairly certain about the relationship between cause and effect (or input and output). (2005). As teams clarify core elements of their strategies, assumptions and expectations, they will have opportunities to determine a number of value-affirming details. Department of Mathematics and Statistics, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, 92182, USA, Department of Genetics, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA, You can also search for this author in The long-term outcome will eventually be attained only after a number of medium-term and short-term outcomeswhich are called preconditionsare first achieved. Understanding by design. Retrieved from https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf19601. Presented at Atlanta, GA. Cobb, P., Confrey, J., Disessa, A., Lehrer, R., & Schauble, L. (2003). Rationales explain how the expected interventions in a change effort are likely to result in meeting preconditions and achieving the long-term outcome. Whose culture has capital? the Theory of Reasoned Action/Theory of Planned Behavior (TRA/TPB) is a combination of two psychological theories of health behavior change developed by Fishbein and Azjen to explain and predict human behavior. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. These rubrics can be used by departments and administrators to assess the degree to which curriculum alignment, assessment, faculty practice and support, infrastructure, and climate for change are supportive of the recommendations in Vision & Change (AAAS, 2011; Brancaccio-Taras et al., 2016). Realistic evaluation. It has 'explanatory power' (Reinholz & Andrews, 2020) in that it should explain why you think particular activities or actions will lead to particular outcomes. For those out there who dont subscribe to the development jargon (good for you): Theories of Change or Action (ToA and ToCs) are two common, but not always well understood or defined, tools used by donors and implementers when designing aid projects. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for feedback that improved the quality of this manuscript. https://doi.org/10.1177/089590402237312. Building a theory of change ensures that careful consideration has been given to how the activities will lead to preconditions and how preconditions contribute to achieving the long-term outcome. New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives: Concepts, Methods, and Contexts, 1, 6592. The assumptions we are making in our ToCs (about how public servants are incentivsed to perform, where the potential for collective action lies, whether procurement systems follow the rules etc) are informing these judgements. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our data, reports and news in your inbox. For approaches that are complex where the operating environment is fluid and unpredictable and may influence a strategy or its implementation in an unknown way a theory of change is an especially important tool. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.15-12-0260. All Rights Reserved. Appreciative inquiry is a stance toward organizational change that assumes that organizations have infinite constructive capacity to improve. ToA/ToCs help donors and project teams understand what it is they are trying to achieve, whether it is possible for them to achieve it, and how they plan to do it. (2019). Drawing on diverse work is crucial for developing a theory of change with preconditions and rationales that are based on more than our own intuitions about how to achieve change. The theory of planned behavior was developed to explain what shapes behaviors over which individuals have the ability to exert self-control. I have been fortunate enough to spend much of the last three months working on the designs of several health and governance programs across PNG, South Asia, and Africa. A scientific theory is a structured explanation to explain a group of facts or phenomena in the natural world that often incorporates a scientific hypothesis . See diagram below. To evaluate complex community initiatives focused on social change, a theory of change was designed as a tool to help clearly articulate underlying assumptions from the offset. Furthermore, assessment of indicators helps communicate the outcomes and progress toward outcomes for people outside of the project team (Kotter, 1996). https://doi.org/10.1177/1098214010389321. (2002). Using appreciative inquiry as a lens to examine a change effort may reveal contrasting or contradictory assumptions like these: the outcome of a change effort is to solve problems; members of the organization are not a valuable source of ideas about what or how to change; and easily measured successes are more important to the momentum of an effort than feelings like hope, excitement, inspiration, caring, and joy (Cooperrider & Whitney, 2001). Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/eval/logicmodels/index.htm. Kellogg Foundation, 2004). Regardless of its format, a useful theory of change will help define or clarify the same basic components. Indicators are how a project team determines if each precondition and the long-term outcome have been met. There is no point selecting delivery modalities, partners or activities (ToA) without knowing how change happens and what the most likely interventions are a project can use to try and nudge things in a certain direction. Exploring the context of change: Understanding the kinetics of a studio physics implementation effort. Shared understandings can then inform collective actions, such as piloting a new evaluation approach. We direct the reader elsewhere for examples of theories of change in STEM education (Connolly & Seymour, 2015) and for guides about how to create a theory of change for your work (Anderson, 2005; Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change, 2003). This product accounts for the context of a specific initiative. Retrieved from https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/overview/models-for-community-health-and-development/logic-model-development/main. (2018). Annual Meeting of the American Evaluation Association. CBELife Sciences Education, 15(4), ar60. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Both agencies seem to expect clear articulation of how and why the planned activities are likely to lead to the desired outcomes, and may also want proposers to draw on the existing research and theory about how change occurs. In this example change effort, that might be shared understanding about what constitutes effective teaching and how effectiveness can be documented. Weiss, C. H. (1995). We introduce two theoretical frameworks that can inform preconditions and rationale in a theory of change, including one framework relevant to achieving behavioral change among individualsthe theory of planned behaviorand one framework relevant to achieving organizational changethe 4I framework of organizational learning. (2004). Grunspan, D. Z., Wiggins, B. L., & Goodreau, S. M. (2014). Generally, ToA provides some boundaries to the process and focuses on an organization, initiative or program's particular role in making change, while still asking some of the harder, deeper questions about how change happens, to be most effective. Next, the DAT collects, analyzes, and interprets relevant data. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. PEA Update 6: common criticisms of PEA approaches, and MEL tools for mitigating them. Design experiments in educational research. Many efforts designed to promote change in undergraduate STEM education have fallen short of their intended outcomes (Henderson, Beach, & Finkelstein, 2011). BioScience, 61(7), 550558. The Keck/PKAL (Project Kaleidoscope) model, sometimes referred to as the River Model, is a process for achieving institutional change in undergraduate STEM education and its steps are meant to be spearheaded by campus leaders (Elrod & Kezar, 2015). A theory of change serves as a good basis for measurement, experimentation and learning. Similarly, a project may draw from multiple change theories to inform each part of a theory of change. Since then in recognition of how this work has changed over the years the Foundation commissioned an updated guide. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.15-08-0170. Phases of Change Theory by Lippitt This theory is an expansion of Lewin's change theory. Olmstead, A., & Turpen, C. (2016). In this way, they can be viewed as tools that are consistent with, or at least complementary to, a theory of change. Theory of change Theory of change is a description of the types of interventions or strategies that bring about your desired outcomes. The degree to which theories of change draw on change theory and research varies considerably. We've got you covered: http://bit.ly/1Gu. This model defines different lenses through which an organizations culture can be viewed (Bolman & Deal, 2008). This page is optimized for a taller screen. Yosso, T. J. This essay sought to distinguish between change theory and research and a theory of change in STEM education. Step-by-step guidance can help groups clarify and document their thinking about each theory of change component and explore the related underlying assumptions. A Keck/PKAL Project at the Association of American Colleges & Universities. providing detailed explanations about what it takes to develop inclusive theories of change and use them to advance powerful, sustained results. However, translating these discoveries into tangible reforms in undergraduate education has proven challenging. A single change theory can contribute to multiple aspects of a theory of change, or it can only contribute to one. Penuel, W. R., Fishman, B. J., Cheng, B. H., & Sabelli, N. (2011). A step in the right direction Logic models and theories of change also differ in how they progress from one step to the next. In Section 3, the four key steps are discussed in detail, providing a step-by-step methodology. Clark, H., & Anderson, A. It can help teams test assumptions related to adapting and implementing strategies and clarify complicated pathways to change. 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