Building an Intervention: A Theoretical and Practical Infrastructure for Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating a Metropolitan-Wide School-To-Career Initiative

Abstract

A blueprint for planning, implementing, and evaluating (PIE) an intervention is presented against the backdrop of a construction analogy. Emphasized is the interplay among theory, research, and practice throughout the PIE process, and operationalized are key terms to guide planners in their own PIE process. A model of ecological innovation and change, the assimmodation innovation model, is introduced to explain the process associated with the implementation and adoption of an innovation and to inform a containment × change and growth model of social action and human development. Illustrated is Kansas City's Business/Education Expectations (BE2): School-To-Career Partnership, a comprehensive, metropolitan-wide, multiple-county school reform initiative that developed out of the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 that seeks a pedagogy and curriculum that enhances student achievement through authentic, contextual, real world thinking and experience.