The DOI matches its Crossref record; 39 of the 39 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Change theory and theory of change: what’s the difference anyway?
Open accessAbstract
This commentary focuses on the difference between a theory of change and change theory, as it relates to systemic change projects in STEM higher education. A theory of change is project-specific and related to evaluation. It makes the underlying rationale of a project explicit, which supports planning, implementation, and assessment of the project. In addition, a theory of change is often required by funding agencies as part of grant proposals. In contrast, change theories represent theoretical and empirically grounded knowledge about how change occurs that goes beyond any one project. Ideally, a theory of change is informed by change theories. This essay describes the connections between a theory of change and change theory and provides examples of how change theory can inform a project’s theory of change. Grounding projects in change theory allows change agents to draw on existing knowledge and to better contribute to our collective knowledge about how to achieve meaningful change in STEM higher education.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The theory of planned behavior
Ajzen, I. (1991) · Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · doi:10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-t · Cited by 90,587
Self-efficacy: The exercise of control
Bandura, A., Freeman, W. H., & Lightsey, R. (1999) · Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy · doi:10.1891/0889-8391.13.2.158 · Cited by 46,835
Self-efficacy: the exercise of control
(1997) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.35-1826 · Cited by 24,281
Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth
Yosso *, T. J. (2005) · Race Ethnicity and Education · doi:10.1080/1361332052000341006 · Cited by 8,663 · cited 2×
“For example, linguistic capital includes cognitive and social skills gained through experiences communicating in more than one language or style (Yosso, 2005, Means et al., in review).”
BackgroundAn organizational learning framework: From intuition to institution
Crossan, M. M., Lane, H. W., & White, R. E. (1999) · The Academy of Management Review · doi:10.2307/259140 · Cited by 4,544
Design Experiments in Educational Research
Cobb, P., Confrey, J., diSessa, A., Lehrer, R., & Schauble, L. (2003) · Educational Researcher · doi:10.3102/0013189x032001009 · Cited by 3,548
Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership.
Scarselletta, M., Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (1994) · Industrial and Labor Relations Review · doi:10.2307/2524435 · Cited by 3,145
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (1998) · Cited by 2,403
Single-Loop and Double-Loop Models in Research on Decision Making
Argyris, C. (1976) · Administrative Science Quarterly · doi:10.2307/2391848 · Cited by 1,225
Henderson, C., Beach, A., & Finkelstein, N. (2011) · Journal of Research in Science Teaching · doi:10.1002/tea.20439 · Cited by 1,055
Metadata
- Authors
- Reinholz, D. L., & Andrews, T. C.
- Venue
- International Journal of STEM Education
- Published
- 2020-01-17
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 2196-7822 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3025010894
- Cited by
- 266
- References
- 39
- FWCI
- 36.98
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Change theory and theory of change: what’s the difference anyway? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1186/s40594-020-0202-3
- The paper
- Reinholz, D. L., & Andrews, T. C. (2020). Change theory and theory of change: what’s the difference anyway? International Journal of STEM Education. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-020-0202-3
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
