What we know and what we can learn: LAC Learning Agenda Process

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Global Evidence to Local Action in Central America: Understanding, localizing, and using evidence on education’s role in preventing violence

Proposal

A Learning Agenda is a tool to strategically focus research; fill evidence gaps; and inform design, programming, and implementation of development activities. A Learning Agenda is defined as a set of questions addressing the critical knowledge gaps impeding informed decisions; these go beyond research questions or evidence gap reviews. It is a tool that contributes to strategic planning, although not a plan in and of itself, nor a rigid implementation pathway. Since mid-2022, the USAID Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) through a current Activity is developing a Learning Agenda for the LAC region, with special interest in engaging local partners and stakeholders in determining what works in diverse contexts and why. The Learning Agenda will contribute to diverse regional priorities, including, but not limited to, addressing the root causes of irregular migration, and preventing violence, with relevant links to formal education, income-generation, and inclusive processes.

The process must navigate contextual challenges in the region due to complex political, social, and economic dynamics that demand a response from education, while simultaneously facilitating improved access to and quality of education. LAC also includes a diverse set of education stakeholders, with diverse interests, including national governments, ministries of education, and other relevant public offices as well as civil society, private schools, and enterprises. LAC must contend with the tension of education as both a public and a private enterprise. Global agendas may appear to enter in conflict with local needs and expectations and must innovate in each context. Within social unrest and political uncertainties, the debate continues over whether schooling is an end in and of itself or if education aims for economic growth – and its expected effects of improving social inequality and preventing irregular migration. In the waning Covid-19 pandemic, challenges of “catching up” while facing continued high absenteeism clash with returning to “normalcy” or finding the energy and willpower to transform the education system.

These diverse issues challenge the development of a Learning Agenda beginning with the conceptual clarity needed and the challenge of identifying theories of change in a complex field where the aims of education are not always clear. Participation, regarding who sits at the agenda-setting table and their proximity to educational processes, needs to be defined, with engagement from multiple sectors. Gatekeepers, or those who can open the door to the participation of beneficiaries and local actors, will be key in broadening perspectives and creating dissemination channels. Generating innovative questions and new fields of inquiry to invigorate perennial problems in education will be critical, particularly as a means – not an end – for impacting climate change, migration, gender equality, economic growth, and other regional priorities. Finally, the Learning Agenda generation process itself must promote stakeholder buy-in and ownership, to facilitate and promote the utilization of knowledge. The experience of generating a Learning Agenda through virtual means will be shared in this panel, both successes and difficulties, as a model for collaborative evidence building capacity in the LAC region.

Author

• Andrea McMerty-Brummer, Pulte Institute for Global Development