St. Clair and Belzer (2007) point out that consultation is not always realistic within the timeframes of policy generation, “One anecdotal estimate suggests that policy making moves about seven times faster than does academic research, so policy will always push beyond what is known and what is hoped for” (p. 198).
The “push” was to design a framework that incorporated a different set of skills, using a different system of “levels” and employing standardized tests that were not broadly familiar to the field. The Project Team needed time together to grapple with the conceptual and philosophical complexities of developing such a framework, but there was little opportunity for this given the timeframe and the additional activity in the field surrounding CIPMS and Employment Ontario. Nevertheless, the Project Team persisted in exploring issues related to validity, identifying hurdles and finding creative solutions for what we now know is a large-scale, multi-year assessment initiative. Since it was agreed that the framework would need to be broadly vetted or validated with the field, the term “validation draft” was added to the title to reflect its change of status.
At the first meeting of all 17 projects, a process for developing the framework based on recommendations from the Vubiz report was presented to the group. It identified a number of steps. Although “steps” suggests a linear approach, it was understood from the beginning that the process would not be a straightforward one. It was also understood that time constraints would control how much of the framework could be developed. Nevertheless, the steps helped “kick start” the initiative and provided direction for thinking about the tasks ahead. The steps include