Session Information
05 SES 02 A, Theories of Change in Area-Based Approaches and (Explaining) the Impact of Early Childhood Education
Paper Session
Contribution
In recent years, there has been considerable interest in Europe, the USA and elsewhere on the complex relationships between schools, neighbourhoods and communities in areas of high poverty (see, for instance, Tate IV, 2012) and therefore on the potential for comprehensive area-based approaches for tackling the complex causes and impacts of educational disadvantage. In the USA, the Harlem Children’s Zone and Promise Neighborhoods have emerged as promising approaches, whilst similar initiatives have emerged across Europe (Edwards & Downes, 2013). In England particularly, a long tradition of multi-sectoral working in high-poverty areas has been revivified in an attempt to build on the children’s zone model ([Names withheld], Raffo, & Wigelsworth, 2012).
All of these approaches rest on the assumption that co-ordinated interventions into all of the factors which place children in high-poverty areas at educational risk should reduce those risks more than single-strand interventions. In particular, while schools can achieve much on their own, more can be achieved if the work of schools is linked to the work of other community agencies. However, convincing evidence as to the effectiveness of these approaches in practice remains elusive (Curto, Fryer Jr., & Howard, 2011; Dobbie & Fryer, 2011; [names withheld], 2013; Whitehurst & Croft, 2010). Whilst this may be because the approaches themselves are ineffective, it may also because the kinds of robust, long-term and context-sensitive evaluations which these approaches demand have not been undertaken.
This paper reports the early findings of an evaluation which seeks to make good these gaps in the research base. The Children’s Community Evaluation began in early 2013 and is expected to run until early 2020. It focuses of four ‘Children’s Communities’ located in disadvantaged areasin English cities and aiming to marshal a coordinated, multi-strand and cradle-to-career approach to improving outcomes for children and young people. The evaluation will ultimately make it possible to say how far these Children’s Communities succeed in their efforts and which interventions within them make most difference. However, the first stage of the evaluation process has involved eliciting the theories of change underpinning the initiatives in order test their internal logic and plausibility. This makes it possible to answer some key research questions:
- How do the initiatives understand the nature and origins of disadvantage in the areas they serve, the outcomes that are desirable in those areas, and the interventions that are required to produce those outcomes?
- How coherent is the internal logic of those understandings and how consistent are they with available research evidence on educational disadvantage?
- In the light of this, how likely is it that the initiatives will achieve the outcomes they seek?
The approach taken here to answering these questions is based on an ecological understanding of the relationship between the social backgrounds of learners and the educational outcomes they achieve. Building on Bronfenbrener’s pioneering work (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), such an approach sees learners as developing within a series of interacting and spatially-located contexts, including school, family, peer group, neighbourhood and wider social structures. Outcomes are therefore seen as the product of complex interactions within the learner’s ecology rather than of isolated factors such as the learner’s capacities or the quality of schooling ([names withheld] & Raffo, 2014; Lee, 2012). This means that interventions to change outcomes have to be multi-strand and to take into account the different configurations of contexts in different places. This creates a rationale for area initiatives but also implies that they are unlikely to be effective unless they embody a deep understanding of the ecologies of children and young people in particular places.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Anderson, A. (2005). An introduction to theory of change. Evaluation Exchange, 11(2), 12-19. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Connell, J. P., & Kubisch, A. C. (1998). Applying a theory of change approach to the evaluation of comprehensive community initiatives: progress, prospects and problems. In K. Fulbright-Anderson, A. C. Kubisch & J. P. Connell (Eds.), New approaches to evaluating community initiatives. Volume 2: Theory, measurement and analysis (pp. 15-44). Queenstown: The Aspen Institute. Curto, V. E., Fryer Jr., R. G., & Howard, M. L. (2011). It may not take a village: increasing achievement among the poor. In G. J. Duncan & R. J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity? Rising inequality, schools, and children's life chances (pp. 483-505). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Dobbie, W., & Fryer, R. G. (2011). Are high-quality schools enough to increase achievement among the poor? evidence from the Harlem Children's Zone. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3(3), 158-187. [Names withheld] & Raffo, C. (2014). Making the local matter: Breaking the link between education, disadvantage and place? . Bristol: Policy Press. [Names withheld] (2013). Developing children's zones for England: What's the evidence? London: Save the Children. [Names withheld], Raffo, C., & Wigelsworth, M. (2012). Developing children's zones for England. London: Save the Children. [Name withheld] & Todd, L. (2010). Dealing with complexity: theory of change evaluation and the full service extended schools initiative. International Journal of Research & Method in Education 33(2), 119-134. Edwards, A., & Downes, P. (2013). Alliances for inclusion: Cross-sector policy synergies and interprofessional collaboration in and around schools. Brussels: European Commission. Lee, C. D. (2012). Conceptual and methodological challenges to a cultural and ecological framework for studying human learnin gand development. In W. F. Tate IV (Ed.), Research on schools, neighborhoods, and communities: Toward civic responsibility (pp. 173-202). Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield for AERA.Tate IV, W. F. (Ed.). (2012). Research on schools, neighborhoods, and communities: Towards civic responsibility. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield for the American Educational Research Association. Power, S., Rees, G., & Taylor, C. (2005). New Labour and educational disadvantage: the limits of area-based initiatives. London Review of Education, 3(2), 101-116. Whitehurst, G. J., & Croft, M. (2010). The Harlem Children’s Zone, Promise Neighborhoods, and the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education. Washington DC: Brown Center on Education Policy at Brooking.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.