Education System Intervention Modeling Framework
states were very different from where they started . Using the modeling framework may help future interveners get a more complete picture of schools that they collaborate with at the beginning of the intervention and understand the risks that they face with respect to intervention sustainability .
5 . Policy Implications
There is a relatively new research
methodology in educational research called Design-Based Implementation Research ( DBIR ), which tries to answer the questions such as : What type of interventions work , in which school settings ? How can an intervention be made more sustainable ? What capacities should the school system improve to facilitate the intervention ( Fishman , Penuel , Allen , Cheng , & Sabelli , 2013 )? Currently , educational and public policy researchers are trying to address these questions , but they may not be experts in the modeling and analysis techniques that complex systems researchers use . The questions posed by the DBIR community can be better answered if the education and public policy researchers work together with the engineers and complexity experts . Educational research provides knowledge about which factors affect change in the agents ’ attributes and their relationships and how to measure them . If an attribute arises as important for an intervention ’ s sustainability , then the educational research community can focus on understanding and measuring that attribute , while safely ignoring those that are unlikely to be impactful and may be difficult or expensive to measure .
Another implication for educational and public policy researchers involved in the implementation of interventions is the characterization of the risk of intervening in a given school system . With the help of the gaps and identification of key variables influencing sustainability , the school can be categorized as either a high-risk , mediumrisk , or a low-risk environment for a particular intervention . Having a diverse portfolio of risks allows an intervener to have a better understanding of what types of school settings are a good fit for the intervention and how to design the intervention to be adequately robust .
6 . Conclusions and Future Work
In this paper , we have shown that
quantitative models can be used to analyze interventions in K-12 school settings and can help guide decisions leading to more sustainable interventions . Through the application of the ESIM framework , key attributes likely to have impacts on the sustainability of an intervention can be identified . The SLIDER case study shows that a school ’ s capacity for intervention is multidimensional and changes with time due to both the intervention itself and trends external to the intervention . Models may help inform school selection for future interventions ; a diverse “ portfolio ” of different risks within schools can help test the limits of intervention impacts and sustainability . In addition , model insights may allow for more strategic allocation of resources during interventions .
In the future , the ESIM framework is well situated to be used as a policy tool by intervention implementation agencies . Currently , ESIM is being used in an NSFfunded intervention , EarSketch ( Freeman , Magerko , & Edwards , 2014 ), which will eventually be implemented across 20 different schools in the 4-year grant period . This will allow for more rigorous testing and refinement of the framework as well as the development of simplified models that can be used prior to intervention work to assess
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