Learning to Use Evidence for Adaptive Management in Crisis and Conflict Settings

Session Submission Type: Group Panel

Description of Session

International development agencies have, over the past few years, increasingly sought to respond to the complex, dynamic and changing contexts presented by countries and areas affected by conflict and crisis. Standard tools for acquiring evidence of ‘what works’ are problematic in these settings, given that interventions are seldom discreet and stable, the domestic institutional capacity to deliver effective services and interventions is often lacking, and what is found to work in one context doesn’t necessarily work in another.

In response to this challenge, development agencies are increasingly turning to an adaptive management approach, which emphasizes an organizational learning process, the collaboration of local, front-line agents, and systematic use of feedback loops of performance, so as to modify practice and improve outcomes.

This is reflected in a recent shift in USAID’s organizational policy and official guidance using a ‘Communicating, Learning and Adapting’ (CLA) Framework. To provide a conducive organizational enabling environment for this approach is not easy. Many implementers are used to reporting to donors using a narrow range of tools which emphasize tracking prescribed activities and outputs which limits flexibility to change strategies. Development agencies seeking to use adaptive management need to be proactive in defining and encouraging a shift of project design and M&E practice. This is unlikely to occur without proactive guidance, training and collaborative relationships.
This panel will explore the theory, the practice, and challenges in supporting a development agency institutional shift towards an adaptive management framework, using USAID’s approach to education in conflict and crisis affected environments (EiCC) as a case study. After presenting USAID’s CLA framework and experience, a theoretical and research methodology for analyzing institutional change using social simulation will frame the analysis of USAID’s CLA initiative. The final presentation will describe the use of a simulated environment for training, in which key actors attempt to apply the principles of adaptive management in the assessment, design and management of education programs in crisis and conflict-affected environments. USAID-ECCN (Education in Crisis and Conflict Network) has designed and implemented three field-based trainings using simulated conflict and crisis contexts and will share the results of this approach.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Education Conflict and Emergencies

Organizer

• Ash Hartwell, ECCN- USAID

Chair

• Nina Weisenhorn, US Agency for International Development (USAID)

Individual Presentations

• Presentation 1: USAID’s Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting Framework - Annina Mattsson, Dubai Cares; Monica Matts, US Agency for International Development (USAID)

• Presentation 2: Social Modeling Organizational Change - Jenn Flemming, University of Massachusetts Amherst

• Presentation 3:A Training Approach for Supporting USAID’s CLA Framework - Ash Hartwell, ECCN- USAID; Tracy Cordner, USAID Education in Crisis & Conflict Network / EDC