Developing the TAMAM's Monitoring Model: An Experience of Evolving Design Planning

Abstract

TAMAM is a research and development project that adopts an evolving design approach in designing processes for school-based improvement that are grounded in the organizational and social culture of the schools. TAMAM’s monitoring and evaluation model establishes a process that provides useful information on an ongoing basis to improve the project’s activities and how they are implemented. As such, it puts into action the concept of the “evolving design planning” adopted by TAMAM, where evidence is collected as a basis for reflective practice and improved decisions. The purpose of this report is to illustrate the journey of the TAMAM Project Steering Team (PST) in developing the project’s monitoring and evaluation model at the conclusion of the first Phase of its implementation. It describes the various processes that led to the development of the current TAMAM monitoring and evaluation approaches from being reactive, practicing intuitive heavy data collection, to being proactive, following purposeful, efficient and effective data collection procedures. The report will highlight how TAMAM’s monitoring and evaluation interventions were gradually conceptualized based on the lessons learned from Phase I and how their implementation in the schools’ settings helped test their usefulness and validity, and accordingly modify and improve their procedures. The ongoing participation of the TAMAM school teams and the constant efforts of the PST to include all stakeholders in decision making to develop the suggested monitoring and evaluation model kept TAMAM true to its claim of participatory evaluation and evolving design planning. In the midst of the absence of an evaluation culture and the scarcity of “participant oriented evaluation” approaches in the Arab world, TAMAM’s adoption of participatory evaluation grants the project the characteristic of being a pioneer in following such methodology and approach.