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

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

A new wave of protests related to the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 in the U,S. and globally has increased awareness not only about structural racism and inequality at home, but has also reinvigorated the debate about the inequitable power dynamics inherent in international development, including the international education sector (see here for example). Yet, efforts to “shift the power” have been ongoing in the sector for some time. USAID’s New Partnership Initiative, for example, aims to promote capacity strengthening to increase local leadership in development, thereby challenging the status quo where much of the decision-making around development priorities, program design, and evaluation still lies with Global North organizations rather than the local stakeholders these programs are meant to serve.

This panel will showcase how capacity strengthening has been integrated into a large-scale, USAID-funded, education research activity, the Supporting Holistic and Actionable Research in Education (SHARE) Activity, and highlight initial results, learnings, and recommendations from this process that will be useful for other education research programs who aim to apply a capacity strengthening process to increase local leadership and ownership.

The SHARE Activity, led by the University of Notre Dame (UND) and implemented by a network of international partners, advances USAID’s global education learning priorities through targeted research and contributes to improved education outcomes. SHARE encompasses several multi-country studies across 12 low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America on different topics in foundational skills, education in conflict and crisis, and higher education, as well as several country-specific research activities. Studies are implemented by country-level partners in each study country, while two regional partners provide cross-country technical and management support.

Promoting the organizational capacity strengthening of local research partners is one of SHARE’s key priorities. SHARE operationalizes capacity as an organization's ability to successfully manage its affairs, while performance is the actualization of that capacity. While the term “capacity building” is widely used in the field of international development, SHARE prefers the terms “capacity strengthening” and “capacity exchange” to acknowledge that partners already have existing capacity in the areas they are aiming to improve and to acknowledge that capacity is not only going unidirectionally from North to South but also from South to North and from South to South. This definition and approach is also aligned with the recently released USAID Local Capacity Strengthening Policy, which elevates local ownership in sustaining development results.

SHARE has developed an approach that emphasizes “capacity exchange” and mutual mentoring among partners, going beyond unilateral “capacity strengthening” and drawing on each partner’s unique strengths, co-creation through joint planning for partners’ capacity exchange activities, and “learning by doing”, integrating capacity strengthening wherever possible into ongoing research activities.

Using a structured, three-phased process, partners first self-assess their own organizational capacity across a range of areas relevant to SHARE’s objectives, select their priorities for growth and indicate areas of strength in which they are willing to share their expertise with others. Based on the results of this self-assessment, UND and partners jointly develop tailored capacity exchange plans for each organization. The plans detail planned activities, such as trainings, webinars, or courses that partners will either participate in or co-design and facilitate, coupled with ongoing mentorship.

UND collects feedback from the other SHARE partners at certain points throughout the implementation of the capacity exchange plans to assess the satisfaction of partner organization staff with the mentoring they are receiving and the perceived usefulness of their participation in SHARE with respect to strengthening their organization’s capacity. In the final phase, the self-assessment is repeated and a set of additional metrics, chosen by partners, is captured to evaluate any changes in organizational performance.

Initial results are positive and feedback from partners indicated a high level of satisfaction with the capacity exchange aspect of SHARE. Nevertheless, the teams have had to address challenges. At the level of implementation, the teams needed to balance multiple demands with respect to targeted capacity-strengthening activities and research project implementation, ensuring that the time needed to embed capacity-strengthening in ongoing project activities was allocated, and aligning capacity strengthening activities with time points in the research where the respective skills were needed. At the relationship level, partners had to adapt to working across cultural contexts that they did not have much prior exposure to and collaborating between partners with different organizational priorities and different experience in the research topics or methods, as well as navigating power imbalances in the partnership.

This panel will feature presentations from UND, the Universidad del Norte in Colombia- one of SHARE’s regional partners, and the Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI)- one of SHARE’s country-level partners implementing the Learning to Improve Book Resource Operational Systems (LIBROS) study. UND will present SHARE’s capacity exchange process, guiding principles, initial results across all of SHARE’s partners, adaptations, and learnings for other organizations that may wish to integrate capacity-strengthening activities into their programs. The Universidad del Norte will share reflections from their perspective as a SHARE regional partner who advised country-level teams and offer recommendations that academics, practitioners, and funding agencies can implement to promote successful north-south collaborations. CDRI will reflect on their experience as a SHARE country-level partner, give specific examples and discuss how the capacity exchange worked for them, as well as their advice for adapting and improving the process.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Katharina Anton-Erxleben, University of Notre Dame-Pulte Institute

Individual Presentations

• Moving from capacity strengthening to capacity exchange in education research partnerships - Katharina Anton-Erxleben, University of Notre Dame-Pulte Institute; Maria Estela Rivero Fuentes, University of Notre Dame; Sean O'Neill, University of Notre Dame-Pulte Institute

• The challenge of capacity strengthening: reflections from an ongoing international collaboration to improve evidence-based decision-making in education - Juan David Parra, Universidad del Norte, Colombia; Camilo Vieira, Universidad del Norte

• Strengthening capacity for actionable research in education: reflections and lessons learned from the case of Cambodia - Phoury Bun, Cambodia Development Resource Institute; Sopheak Song, Cambodia Development Resource Institute

Discussant

• Samantha Alvis, USAID