Paper 1: Conceptualizing the work to scale educational intervention

• In Event: From rigorous evidence to impact in the classroom: what it takes to bring evidence-based interventions to scale

Proposal

The work to scale evidence-based educational interventions is a complex challenge. Across different contexts, it often involves multiple actors, time periods, perspectives, and scopes of work. Drawing from years of experience working with governments and development partners, we will share frameworks and lessons on three critical components of successful scaling: (1) developing an evidence-based model optimized for a specific context through iterative phases of implementation and research, (2) supporting government partners to plan for large-scale implementation while maintaining fidelity to the original evidence,and (3) creating a supportive ecosystem for sustainable, long-term implementation.

Much of IPA’s work historically has been on the first component, designing and testing solutions to educational challenges. Interventions - a teacher training program, a school feeding policy - are rigorously tested to assess their ability to improve key outcomes. Typically, new innovations start at small scale, proof-of-concept phases. Effective interventions are then identified to advance along the path to scale, assessing how robust the original findings were, generating new evidence to explore how interventions work, the causal mechanisms underpinning their impact, as well as for whom they are most effective and under what conditions. As a deeper understanding of an intervention is developed, it is used to inform how it can be implemented at greater scale, and potential tradeoffs such as between fidelity and adaptability, and between cost-conscious and high quality.

The questions related to moderation and mediation, who the intervention works for and under way conditions, introduce the second and third components. In addition to understanding a particular intervention, to consider scale, it is critical to understand the broader context and system in which that intervention takes place, and also, potentially, to improve that system along with the work to scale an intervention. For example, many effective educational interventions rely on teacher coaches, dedicated educational professionals who provide key inputs such as training, advice, and feedback to in-service teachers. In initial proof of concept phases, NGOs or other actors can support the role of coaches, either by involving their own staff or providing other support to existing coaches, such as transport stipends or other resources. When considering large scale implementation, a critical question is what is the status of the existing coaching workforce? Investigating and understanding who are coaches, what are their current responsibilities, and if they have the capacity to take on the intervention and implement it with fidelity will determine the work needed on the coaching workforce that would enable the intervention to scale.

Key areas of focus for the second pillar will often include workforce concerns, but also data and information systems, and monitoring and feedback loops. The ability to implement interventions with quality at scale relies on strong systems.

In this presentation, we provide further detail on this framework for understanding the work to scale educational intervention and examples across our work with education ministries.

Author

• Sarah Kabay, Innovations For Poverty Action