Researchers Without Borders

This Researchers Without Borders Project is an outgrowth of a National Science Foundation- supported project called "Applying Research on Science Materials Implementation: Bringing Measurement of Fidelity of Implementation (FOI)to Scale." That project, which we refer to as the "FOI Project," set out to create instruments to measure the fidelity of implementation of reform-based science and mathematics instructional materials. As we proceeded with that work, the project evolved in three significant ways that have led to the creation of this RWB Project.

First, because we sought to create instruments that could be used across multiple interventions, we had to create a conceptual framework that would serve as a common foundation for organizing the constructs we wanted to measure. This conceptual framework provided a foundation for identifying and defining the essential elements of the interventions so that we could collect data and accumulate knowledge across them.

Second, we shifted our perspective from one of measuring fidelity to one of measuring use and enactment. This stemmed from the fact that teachers never implement a program exactly as written and our belief that high-quality teachers in fact shouldn't implement programs exactly as written. Rather, they should customize them to the contexts and conditions of their students and environment. Thus, rather than orient ourselves with a perspective that more fidelity is better, we oriented ourselves around the importance of specifically and rigorously measuring use so that we could understand why types of use lead to the outcomes we want to see.

Third, we came to understand that the framework we created for measuring use of instructional materials could be applied to other kinds of interventions and innovations. Using a process that includes identifying the "critical components" of the intervention, organizing them in a framework and systematically measuring them, we can learn which elements work, which don't, and how to adapt the innovation over time to accomplish our intended goals in the future.

This RWB project seeks to bring together individuals interested in finding ways to rigorously measure enactment of innovations in ways that support accumulation of knowledge about those interventions. The framework developed in this project is one approach that can be adapted and we expect there are others. The primary goal is to agree on common language, share definitions and ultimately use some common instruments so that we can learn from one another's work and grow knowledge not only about the innovations themselves but also about measuring their enactment.