Intellectual Frontiers

Capture Cases That Separate What Happened From What People Made of It

Farhana’s Field Evidence Protocol

The next round of fieldwork should capture cases in which the organizational structure became visible to a child or family, and cases in which coordinated adult work made the structure disappear. The protocol is printed in the book as “Farhana’s Field Evidence Protocol”; the instruments after it turn its questions into forms.

Interview Categories

Interview at minimum:

  • classroom teachers;

  • ELD or multilingual learner specialists;

  • special educators;

  • reading and mathematics specialists;

  • counselors or psychologists;

  • principals and assistant principals;

  • central-office specialists participating in CFTs;

  • family-facing staff;

  • parents or caregivers, with appropriate consent and de-identification.

Case Prompts

Ask for one case that went unusually well and one that went badly. For each case, ask:

  1. What was first observed, and who noticed it?

  2. Who initially thought they owned the problem?

  3. Which adults eventually became involved?

  4. What information existed but was not initially visible, and where did interpretations differ?

  5. What did the family know that the school did not?

  6. What did the child actually experience during the period of uncertainty?

  7. What meetings or handoffs occurred?

  8. What changed because adults coordinated, and what remained fragmented?

  9. Who acted as the informal integration owner, and what would have happened if that person had not intervened?

  10. What routine could make the successful behavior repeatable without depending on that individual?

Evidence Standard

For every story considered for publication, separate five things.

Part What it holds

Observed fact

What participants directly saw, or what records show.

Interpretation

What participants believed the observation meant.

Decision

What the organization chose to do.

Outcome

What changed afterward.

Counterfactual uncertainty

What cannot be known about what would have happened otherwise.

This discipline keeps the fieldbook from turning experience into causal claims that the evidence cannot support.