Implementing Fidelity: Social Effects of Impact Research

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Eight
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring Tensions Between Policy Rhetoric and Practiced Reality (Table 3)

Abstract

This talk describes the social consequences of enacting fidelity of implementation, a core concept in impact research. Drawing on a year of fieldwork following an impact study of Math4All, a pseudonymous intervention, I present ethnographic data from teacher training workshops to demonstrate how teachers' role emerges in-and-through the interactional production of fidelity. Though teachers are initially trained to see and think like curious researchers, fidelity compels their re-positioning as faithful administrators. Teachers ultimately emerge as instruments, rather than agents, of science. Taking Math4All as an exemplary case of 21st century evidence production in education, I argue that fidelity is a part of attempts to distribute knowledge without distributing inquiry.

Author

• Shenghe Ye, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author