2024 journal article
Collaborative capacity-building for collective evaluation: a case study with informal science education centers
International Journal of Science Education, Part B.
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
3. Good Health and Well-being
(Web of Science)
Source: ORCID
Added: January 28, 2024
ABSTRACTABSTRACTThis paper reports on the results of a research-practice partnership that included a U.S. university research team and a state-funded grants program that supports informal science education. The goal of the 2-year partnership was to develop an empirically-tested model for collaboration and capacity-building (CCB) in support of collective evaluation. The model was implemented with 23 informal science education (ISE) organizations across one U.S. state. A comparison of pre and post-surveys indicate that the goals of the CCB model were attained. Participants reported an (1) increased perception of a common agenda, (2) increased capacity for conducting evaluation, and (3) increased peer-peer engagement. Participants also highlighted ongoing barriers to collective evaluation and suggested specific supports to overcome these barriers. This collaborative capacity-building model, although tested with ISE providers, is generalizable to other collective evaluation efforts.KEYWORDS: Evaluationcollective impactinformal science education AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank all the participating ISE educators and institutions, who so enthusiastically engaged in evaluation with us and each other.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Ethics statementThe study design was approved by the North Carolina State University Institutional Review Board (IRB Protocol #20486). Only those who consented to participate are included in this study. Participants were informed that their data would be used for research purposes and for publication. Participant identity is confidential.Additional informationFundingThis research was supported with a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services [grant number MG-70-19-0019-19].Correction StatementThis article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.