Navigare nella complessità: la valutazione di impatto nei contesti socio-educativi

[Autom. eng. transl.] What is impact assessment? With what methods can it be conducted? How to design impact assessment designs taking into account the elements of complexity that distinguish socio-educational situations? Starting from these questions, this volume gives an account of a research path on a very current topic: that of impact assessment. This form of evaluation, increasingly requested and practiced today, brings to attention a question of fundamental importance for those who finance, plan or operate in educational and training contexts: understanding "if, how and why" the resources invested generate the desired impacts. Making evidence available on these mechanisms allows us to satisfy not only a cognitive interest, but also to lay the foundations for transforming and improving the contexts in which the evaluation is practiced. With the aim of understanding what impact assessment is and how it can be conducted, in the first part of the volume the focus is on the examination of conceptual and methodological issues; the theoretical-methodological framework is then enriched with the results coming from the analysis of 74 impact assessments selected following a review conducted in the ERIC database and referring to the field of education. Finally, some strategies are proposed for designing impact evaluation designs consistent with the characteristics of socio-educational contexts.