AISL Logic model

I’m working through “Logic models for program design, implementation, and evaluation: Workshop toolkit” to develop the logic model for my AISL grant.

Warm-up

  • For whom is the program or policy designed? It’s designed for two related groups: students in 7-8 grade and students in 9-10 grade from various schools in the Buffalo area, in an informal context. (Where and how will we recruit?)
  • What are the main goals or objectives of the program or policy? The main goals are for participants to develop CS skills and knowledge in the context of their existing identities and concerns.
  • What is the timeline and duration of the program or policy? Overall, it’s a four-year grant, with semester-long cycles built in. I have goals at several scales:
    • For individuals coming into the community, they should increase participation (attendance and interaction), they should increase the complexity of their stories, they should increase the engagement of their stories with their other worlds.
    • For the community, I want sustained membership, community leaders, shifts in the available subject positions, and integration with institutions in related worlds.
    • For the app, I want uptake of affordances facilitating movement across literacies, criticality in storytelling, and better materials for teachers and students just getting started.
  • What are the major activities or strategies associated with the program or policy?
    • Development of a workshop-based community of practice.
    • Development of Unfold Studio and its curriculum.
    • Development of situated and critical constructs and analytics-based assessments.

Maybe the logic model should build on the literacy diagram I have already developed, showing the relationship between work at the plane of practices and work at the plane of infrastructure. Build writing about the relationship between human and technological systems. (Specifically on the production of space and place through multiple litercies.)

Goals

  • What are the goals of the program or policy?
    • For individuals coming into the community, they should increase participation (attendance and interaction), they should increase the complexity of their stories, they should increase the engagement of their stories with their other worlds.
    • For the community, I want sustained membership, community leaders, shifts in the available subject positions, and integration with institutions in related worlds.
    • For the app, I want uptake of affordances facilitating movement across literacies, criticality in storytelling, and better materials for teachers and students just getting started.
  • What do we want to know about the program or policy?
    • I want to know if these goals are being met.
    • I also want to know about relationships between the goals.

What will be the relationship between the logic model and conjecture mapping?

Three types of logic models:

  • Theory
  • Activities
  • Outcomes

This document makes a distinction between “outcomes” and “impacts” which is, I think, parallel to Sandoval’s distinction between “mediating processes” and “outcomes.” Either way, the middle category is stuff that happened, but not necessarily meaningful. Analytics fit here; they document events but not what they mean.

The inputs-outputs-outcomes structure (p. 13) fits conjecture mapping closely.

What is the relationship between a logic model and a framework for design-based research? One difference seems to be that a logic model is a rationale for program outcomes, not research outcomes. So the logic model is sort of what the research will produce. The logic model makes assumptions which may be one target of the research.

Inputs, Outputs, and Outcomes

Inputs

  • Teacher
  • PD
  • Unfold Studio
  • Curriculum
  • Computers

Outputs

  • Student-written stories
  • Classroom conversations & collaborative practice
  • Student performance on assessments

Impacts

  • Literacy place (community of practice engaged in cultural transformation)
  • Individual transliteracy computing skills
  • Transformation of existing literacies and of CS.

Elements of a logic model

Problem Statement

What is the problem statement here?

  • What is the problem or issue?
    • Marginalized students participate in CS less than their dominant-culture peers.
  • Why is this a problem? (What causes the problem?)
    • Marginalizing dynamics have been identified but not addressed. CS-as-marginalizing has not been addressed.
  • For whom (individual, household, group, community, society in general) does this problem exist?
    • It’s a problem for the students because they miss out on intellectual and economic opportunities. It’s a problem for their cultures because they miss out on critical transformation. It’s a problem for CS because it loses ways talent and perspectives.
  • Who has a stake in the problem? (Who cares whether it is resolved?)
    • Educators, parents, communities (See Gallup poll). CS pipeline people like researchers and employers. Activists: civil society, urbanism, social justice.
  • What is known about the problem, issue, or people who are involved? What research or experience is available? What do existing research and experience say?
    • I’ve got lots on this…

Outcomes

Short-term outcomes

Long-term outcomes