Issues that shaped this Evaluation

1.Action Research

The process of action research as defined by Kemmis (1995) is "to involve a spiral of self-reflective cycles of:

  • planning a change,
  • acting and observing the process and consequences of the change.
  • reflecting on these processes and consequences, and then
  • re-planning,
  • acting and observing,
  • reflecting, and so on..."
Merging the notions of action research and participatory research, Kemmis (1997) outlines the six key features of participatory action research, "at least as important as the self-reflective spiral." These he outlines as being: -- A social process

-- Participatory

-- Practical and collaborative

-- Emancipatory

-- Critical

-- Recursive (reflexive, dialectical)

ESLARP's beliefs that   "because local individuals and neighborhood organizations participate in goal setting, program development, and plan implementation, these projects are more likely to become self-sustaining," and that  "many planned solutions fail when they are imposed on a community by outsiders who do not comprehend the problems they face, " reflected in some form the features of participatory action research outlined by Kemmis. Yet, ESLARP was challenged in initiating and conducting the IT program so as to manifest its underlying philosophy of action research more substantially. The evaluation was concerned with whether and in what ways the participatory action research approach motivated and shaped the IT initiative.

2.Innovations

Guided by Bruce's (1995) view of an 'innovation' as "the manifestation of a set of beliefs and values about change", the attempt to make it possible for the East St.Louis community to enter the information superhighway and for its people to become "technologically active" members of an information society assumed the shape of an innovation. Bruce sees an innovation as encompassing more than just the "...pieces of software or hardware, but also all of those documents and practices that define and support its intended uses..."

In addition to viewing innovation as a process rather than a product, Bruce makes a distinction between intentions of innovations and their realizations in practice:
The developers may intend that the innovation modify the social system so that certain desirable characteristics are achieved. They see the innovation set into an idealized context and used in an idealized way. Their vision of the changed social system is thus an idealization . What happens in practice is that the social system may or may not change at all, and if it does change, it may not do so in accord with the developers' goals....The distinction between ideal and real suggests a process, the realization process, whereby the innovation leads to practices potentially different from those intended by the developers. (p. 16)

Assessing the usability and accessibility of the two IT initiatives could indicate the correspondence between the idealized form of the innovation and its given realization, which in Bruce's view " depends as much upon the developers' understanding of the context of use as upon the inherent power of the innovation to effect change."

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