The challenge of capacity strengthening: reflections from an ongoing international collaboration to improve evidence-based decision-making in education

• In Event: Integrating capacity exchange in international education research: an effort to move towards more equitable partnerships

Proposal

One primary goal of the SHARE (Supporting Holistic & Actionable Research in Education) cooperative agreement between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the University of Notre Dame (UND) is to improve the capacity of partners in different countries to participate in generating and implementing evidence in their country’s education ecosystems. The international partnership includes different types of institutions, including universities, research institutes, and consultancy firms. An implicit assumption behind this strategy—which involves conducting multiple studies in parallel, where experienced and less experienced researchers collaborate to answer questions of interest for USAID’s international education and learning agenda—maintains that co-creation (e.g. in defining and implementing quantitative and qualitative-oriented research designs) constitutes a critical mechanism for successful capacity strengthening.


During this presentation, we reflect on some learnings emerging from our role as advisors to teams in different countries (and representing diverse socio-cultural settings) in our effort to contribute to capacity strengthening goals, specifically in orienting applied research. Some contextual circumstances that have mediated such collaboration, including previous research experience among partners in specific sectors (e.g. consulting vs academic studies) and the advisors’ limited awareness of each country’s values and cultural contours, deserve consideration, as these shape specific processes such as sharing feedback and setting working chronograms. We also raise questions about the effectiveness of explicit capacity strengthening initiatives, like organizing workshops for updates in research techniques and methodological applications (e.g., collecting and analyzing information from different sources), concerning their relevance and the timing to assist analysts across teams to answer questions in the specific projects, and during particular stages of each research process.


We contend that pre-existent power relations in the interactions between researcher groups and organizations also impact the possibility of actual co-creation, as they might affect the empowerment of some researchers to participate actively in different methodological discussions and even challenge the ideas presented by principal investigators and advisory teams to contextualize research design better in various social settings. To this last point, we should annotate explicit efforts made by the UND, the institution leading the international consortium that implements SHARE globally, to address these circumstances. However, we invite revisiting some of the strategies and initiatives implemented in this regard, which is an exercise that can contribute to informing broader debates among academics, practitioners, and even funding agencies on the most effective means to minimize obstacles to encourage successful north-south partnerships to conduct research and applied work around contemporary pressing educational challenges, locally and internationally.

Authors

• Juan David Parra, Universidad del Norte, Colombia

• Camilo Vieira, Universidad del Norte