Toward a Conceptual Framework for Practical Measurement as Organizational Structure

Abstract

A growing number of educational improvement efforts are incorporating the development of practical measures of learning into their work. This paper extends previous work on practical measurement by focusing attention on the organizational dynamics of measurement practice. In addition to their role in providing windows to certain kinds of information, measures also function as both carriers and drivers of new and existing assumptions, categories and values. We present the outlines of a conceptual framework of practical measurement situated within processes of organizational persistence and change, and we illustrate key facets of the framework with examples drawn from a DBIR project focused on co-developing practical measures of teacher learning in a university-district partnership.