Step 6: Monitor the process and results of intervention(s).

Having developed and implemented your intervention(s) in Step 5, you need to monitor both the process of implementation and the results of your efforts.

It is important to monitor the process of your intervention(s) to make sure that it is implemented as you intended, or if not, that you know what alterations were made.

It is important to monitor the results of your interventions to see if they had the desired effects and to see if they had any unintended consequences. The "desired effects" will probably be related to your original (or reformulated) puzzlement. However, be sure to be open to seeing other, "surprise" results. Try to monitor a student's or a group's performance or behavior over time, rather than taking just a brief snapshot at one point in time. You might think about how you could involve others in helping monitor the results of your interventions. Also, consider asking the focus student or group about their experience related to your intervention(s).

If you are interested in effects on students' learning, more formal assessment methods may be useful to supplement qualitative information. For some general guidelines for assessing student learning and approaches to evaluating educational interventions, see Stringer (2004, pp. 164-165, 169-172). Information and skills you have developed in courses on student learning or assessment (e.g., EDUC 614: Designing and Assessing Teaching and Learning in the ASTL program at GMU) should be useful to you in Step 6.

Books and articles (including previous CIP studies) that examined a puzzlement similar to yours or a cultural influence similar to one you found relevant may provide suggestions for ways to monitor your intervention(s). See the Tutorial on Using Resources in the CIP for guidance and specific suggestions for using such resources.

Similarly, the suggestions on the CIP web site for Step 4 related to the cultural influences that you found relevant to your puzzlement might also provide ideas for gathering and analyzing information as you monitor the processes and results of your intervention(s). For your convenience, links are provided below to various pages of CIP Step 4, Gather and analyze relevant information as needed:

4.1	Gathering information about your beliefs or values, or those of other educators
4.2	Gathering information about the school's culture(s)
4.3	Gathering information about cultural mismatches
4.4	Gathering information about students' experiences and meanings
4.5	Gathering information about individual students' cultural "negotiations"

Suggestions for writing

Memos can play similar roles in this CIP step as they did during data collection and analysis in CIP Step 4. They can be used to document and think about how you implemented the intervention(s), information you collect to monitor the effects of your intervention(s), and your analysis of that information. You might want to reread the discussion of memos in Step 4 at this point.

Most readers of your final report will want to know both what you did in your intervention (i.e., the process) and what the results of your efforts were. You could have separate sections for these topics or you could weave them together. The second strategy might be particularly useful if you have more than one intervention and want to discuss the results of each intervention separately.

In presenting the results of your interventions, you will need to clearly convey how you gathered and analyzed information to determine your results, what you found as a result of your analysis, and your conclusions about the effects of your intervention(s). Be sure to present evidence to support your conclusions in a clear and convincing manner. Many of the same issues discussed about writing in Step 4 apply again and you may find it useful to reread that section.

Step 5-Develop Intervention(s) | Step 7-Write Report