Three ways to invest in evidence: pros, cons and key lessons for promoting change

• In Event: Shaping protest using evidence: learning our way to systemic change

Proposal

Under its Strategy 2030, the Jacobs Foundation seeks to improve children’s learning and education by promoting the generation and translation of evidence into policy and practice. In practice, this involves funding research to understand how children learn, promoting the use of evidence in school practice and EdTech, and supporting countries to integrate evidence into education policy and implementation.
A key pillar of the approach consists of bridging research and practice to bring down structural barriers and support researchers and practitioners to work together. Through LEAP (Leveraging Evidence for Action to Promote change), individual researchers can use their skills to support education innovations working to address pressing educational challenges across the globe. Education ventures gain access to tailored expertise to strengthen their organization’s operations and evidence base. Another collaborative platform, SALEX (School Action Learning Exchange), brings together the leading global school “aggregators” (convening organizations of schools or EdTech innovators) to learn, collaborate, leverage resources, and mainstream the use of evidence-informed practices across the global school system.

On the country level, newly incubated Education Evidence Labs – multi-partner coalitions that bring together the Ministry of Education, sub-national education authorities, research institutions, and practitioners – support improved use of evidence in policy making and implementation to ensure that programs designed to improve children’s learning and education are grounded in evidence. This work is done at a national level in Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Switzerland, and Colombia to foster the generation and uptake of evidence, facilitate the introduction of effective teaching and learning practices at the sub-national level, and create public-private co-funding mechanisms that can scale effective programs and interventions.
This paper will share reflections from each of these approaches, calling out lessons of what works in breaking down barriers to evidence collaborations and the application of shared insights between researchers and practitioners.

Authors

• Donika Dimovska, Jacobs Foundation

• Samuel Kembou, Jacobs Foundation