What is a promising practice

© Oxford Policy Management Ltd, July 2017 25 4 Defining promising practices

4.1 What is a promising practice

Promising practices are understood as the mid-point on a continuum from emerging practice to good and best practice. They are defined both positively against emerging practice– as making progress or demonstrating greater potential than a practice that is undocumented or does not represent good practice; as well as negatively – against good or best practices that meet all or most of the criteria of ideal practice. Most importantly in comparison with goodbest practice a promising practice describes a programme for which robust evidence of programmatic effectiveness its ability to be sustained andor replicated is emerging or not available. Figure 2: Conceptual Framework for promising best practice Source: Spencer, Schooley et. al 2013 For the purpose of this assessment the following definitions from Center for Disease Control and Prevention CDC is adopted - where promising practice belongs to a continuum of practices that, “represents the ongoing application of knowledge about what is working to improve desired outcomes in a given context” CDC, 2010. 8 This is in line with the Promising Practices Network which provided, “evidence-based information about what works to improve the lives of children, 8 Centers for Disease Control CDC Best Practice Work Group 2010 © Oxford Policy Management Ltd, July 2017 26 youth, and families” 9 and the UNICEF MENARO 2015 report on Good Practices in Adolescent and Youth Programming that defines good practice as a programme that, “preferably meets all [assessment] criteria; no programme qualifies for this category unless evidence of effectiveness and sustainabilityreplication is provided.” Promising practice is defined as “meets most criteria, mainly those for evidence-based, equity, values orientation, innovativeness and youth involvement, but no evaluation of outcomes has been conducted and thus there is no evidence of effectiveness.” 10 UNICEF, 2015

4.2 Criteria for promising practice