November 1996
Volume 60 |
Number 11
|
| |
|
| Organizational
Biography of the Overseas Teaching Program: Using Biographic
Methods in Educational Program Evaluation and Curriculum Development |
Kathleen Sullivan Brown, Ph.D.
Alice Otto Edler, M.D.
Programs, like people, have a life of their own. They are conceived
and birthed, suffer growing pains and struggle to find a place
in larger organizations and cultures. They muddle through the
day-to-day life of implementation with the difficulties and joys,
successes and failures of any mortal life. Most important, they
change. They grow and respond to situations in the environment
and interactions of others.
Educational programs are organizations created by persons working
together toward a common purpose. They are predetermined arrangements
of individuals whose inter-related tasks and specialties enable
the total aggregate to achieve goals. For the past half-century,
the most acclaimed and often used rationale for curriculum development
and evaluation has had at its heart the statement of curriculum
goals and the implicit assumption that if the goals are properly
formulated, stated and implemented, they are reliably and explicitly
achievable.
Biography of the Life Course of OTP
In our research over the past three years, we have looked at
a collaborative international curriculum development program.
The ASA Overseas Teaching Program (OTP) is an outreach effort
to improve health care and health education in the developing
world. OTP volunteers spent one to three months in Tanzania or
Zambia, sharing expertise with local doctors and paraprofessionals
on the theory and practice of anesthesia. In following the life
story of this teaching program, as told by various narrators,
we as evaluation researchers found the story taking on the quality
of a program biography. More than just prosopography, or biographical
sketches, of the individual participants but also not merely a
sum of the parts, the resultant description is a biography of
the life the program took on because of collective action in a
particular setting and context. The story is reconstructed from
multiple sources, including:
- formal resources of the program using archival research of
public and semi-public documents;
- informal resources of the participants' lives as described
in interviews; and
- participant/observation data of one author.
In addition, the story is set in an evolving historical and cultural
context; in other words, the life course of an educational program
is contextualized by its setting in a developing country, with
its own local definitions of modern professionals, teaching and
health. This article, therefore, will briefly describe the life
course of OTP. Like good biography, this story pieces together
the stages of this life and its changes over time. As in biography,
the goals here are not generalizable conclusions. The significance
of the events cannot be determined with probability theories.
The value of the insights about the appropriateness of the program's
goals, their accomplishment and their usefulness lie ultimately
with the reader.
Data and Methods for Biographical Reconstruction
Data for this biographical reconstruction were primarily archival.
They included official semiannual reports of the OTP's committee
chairs to ASA and individually written essays by program participants
in which they reflected on their experiences, as this example
shows:
"Later, after establishing a personal investment in my relations
with the community, the results of the observations began to take
on the values of the observed participants. Mary Catherine Bateson
refers to this process of ethnography as 'stepping outside your
own tradition to learn from other models.' Learning from other
models was particularly hard, especially when mine had always
been referred to as the superior model."
Participants wrote their reflections when they returned from
their overseas tour of duty with the program, and ASA published
them annually in the NEWSLETTER. Additionally, other archival
materials, including related publications, were collected through
a literature search using MedLine. Data also included taped interviews
with leaders and participants in the program. Additional data
consisted of photographs, log books, other documents and material
artifacts. One researcher participated directly in the delivery
of the program and brought an "insider" perspective
to the analysis, while the second researcher was an outsider with
an "outside" view.
Results Indicate "Life Phases" of OTP
We analyzed these archival documents chronologically and outlined
the activities described in periodic reports. In light of earlier
ethnographic interviews, participation and data collection, in
our role as evaluation researchers, we began to notice a developmental
or biographical language being used. Elements of self-description
emerged as though the program itself had evolved through four
distinct "life phases."
Early in these accounts, the program made its debut with announcements
and selections of names, locations and sponsors. The genealogy
of the program, which described the founder's intention, was published
in the first OTP episode in the ASA NEWSLETTER (October
1990). A single program site was selected, with future sites to
be announced later. The founders identified the program as "unique"
in its appearance and pointed out its distinctive differences
from its predecessors.
The second phase or life stage of the program reflected its growth
and the onset of adolescence. Here the program made its first
attempts at consciously articulating its own ideology encapsulated
in the slogan "Don't give me a fish; teach me how to fish."
Some simple statistics were reported, such as the demographics
of the participants, the participating hospitals and the schools.
The number of participants grew, and further growth brought differentiation.
New ideas from practitioners clashed with earlier theoretical
formulations.
A new addition to the OTP family came along when a second hospital
site was added to the educational program. More details surfaced
about daily life and the practices encountered in the field. The
help of the founders was acknowledged. The program was described
in terms of its fullness and growth. The language of the program
participants demonstrated self-awareness of the dimensions of
its own growth. Recruitment efforts expanded and were helped by
"getting the word out." Overall, the level of activities
increased.
The next two phases brought maturity, first to individual participants
and then to the participants as a group of professionals. The
authors of the reflective essays described their own "personal
growth" and "fulfillment" through their participation
and involvement in the program.
Complexity became a theme. Details of the day-to-day life were
elaborated as evidence of this maturation. Now publications contained
the first mention of a relationship developing among the collaborating
nations involved in this international program. Disappointments
occurred between some partners, and new contracts were struck
with others, which resulted in the voicing of a certain cynicism,
sometimes even wisdom. The number of publications reached an all-time
high during this maturation period. New partnerships were formed
with other programs and other organizations that focused on similar
interests. Related programs spun off because of some practitioners'
earlier participation in this effort.
For evaluators, a new definition of a successful program began
to form at this juncture. Heretofore, we had naively assumed programs
were good or valuable if they drew in large numbers of participants,
attracted substantial funding and administrative support, and
displayed some longevity by sustaining themselves over time. Now
as evaluators, we began to look for generativity in the original
program, a sort of intellectual DNA. How many offshoot ideas did
it produce, and were those new branch programs equally important
to our evaluation as the original program in achieving the goals
of improving medical care in the developing world?
Reflection characterized the second phase of maturity. The individual
nature of the program sites was to be savored; their nuances could
not be described in words. The program offered philosophical insights
to group members as doubt and disillusion began to creep in about
long-term effectiveness. The program founder recruited and trained
a new leader and then retired from active participation. The program
entered a transition stage, shifting from developing a curriculum
to assisting others to develop their curriculum as a step toward
autonomy of the junior partner. Now the evaluators' definition
of program success moved beyond basic dimensions to include properties
of generativity and increased reflectiveness of both practitioners
in the field and theorists in the research arena.
Finding Meaning in a Collective History
Researchers in educational evaluation and curriculum development
can benefit from biographic methods through an understanding that
educational programs do not emerge from their initial planning
as fully developed, mature, organizational efforts. They grow,
change and evolve in response to sociocultural conditions. Early,
informal and continuous evaluations promote adjustments to the
life course of an educational program just as early, informal
and continuous mentoring of a young professional promotes adjustments
to a career course. Popularity and the diversity of participants,
once thought of as signs of health, are now seen as signals both
of a power for growth and the potential for dissonance and conflict
over organizational decisions. Appeal to diverse participants
may point to an important and neglected generative aspect as program
principles find their way into spinoffs in related disciplines
and practices.
Biography holds lessons about its subject. So too is there a
potential lesson for educational programs and organizations to
look at themselves biographically, to be aware of the life course
and to find meaning in their collective history. Analysis of educational
programs using biographic methods provides a holistic picture
of the program as a functional unit with goals, life stages and
a complex personality. Looking at a program as a "collective
biography of its participants" helps evaluators understand
that the early ideals and goals of the founders and the leadership
are not necessarily the same reality lived by participants at
all levels and stages of program implementation. Additionally,
this model allows the evaluator to identify individual milestones
and trends that would be excluded by a one-day or limited visit
casual model focusing on events, goals or outcomes.
We hope that our discussion has introduced a modality of program
evaluation and curriculum development that describes and suggests
a continuous life process, from the birth of an idea through its
adolescent application, maturity and generativity. Individual
and collective outcomes create a more comprehensive picture of
educational and organizational change undertaken by a group of
educators when seen through the eyes of an evaluator as program
biographer.
Bibliography is available upon request from the authors.
Kathleen Sullivan Brown, Ph.D., is an educational
consultant and researcher in St. Louis, Missouri.
Alice Otto Edler, M.D., is an Instructor
at the Washington University School of Medicine and St. Louis
Children's Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri. She was a volunteer
for the ASA Overseas Teaching Program in May 1996.
return to top
Home >Newsletters
>November 1996Home >Test
|