Collaborative professionalism and education system change: new evidence from Kenya, India and Rwanda

• In Event: Applying Ideas from Systems Thinking to International Education and Development

Proposal

This paper offers new empirical evidence on the characteristics of collaborative professional relationships and how these can function to bring about positive education system change. It argues that collaborative professionalism is one example of systems thinking that can be applied to the field of education development, offering an important approach for large scale change management in the global south. By collaborative professionalism we refer to peer professionals - in this case teachers or headteachers - working together in network structures, such as communities of practice (CoPs), to share learnings and improve practice, and the leadership required to support this. By education system, we mean the people, processes, relationships, resources and institutions which interact to deliver education outcomes (DFID, 2018). The paper provides a synthesis of empirical evidence from three settings – in Kenya, India and Rwanda – to illustrate the characteristics of collaborative professionalism in contexts where it has been applied at scale to bring about shifts in learning outcomes.
Leading academics recognise that public sector reforms often fail and call for a better understanding of ‘how change happens’: in other words a better understanding of large scale delivery, people and institutional change. For example, Banerjee et al (2017) talk about ‘getting inside the machine’ of government to deliver interventions successfully at scale. Pritchett et al. (2010) call for a focus on understanding the black box of delivery and the ‘functioning’ of public systems and institutions. In education, this field, which we refer to as change management, is small, and much of the emerging literature focuses on accountability relationships or incentives for change.
We argue that the principles of collaborative professionalism have an essential role to play in this nascent discipline of change management in education development, and are pertinent for addressing complex challenges which require a more systemic solution, such as quality improvement at scale. Although there is an established literature in high income contexts (Hargreaves and Fullan 2012, Hattie 2016), there is less evidence from lower income settings. Through the case studies, we illustrate the shifting relationships between education system actors as change happens. We argue that a positive dynamic for change is not only based on accountability relationships: when relationships are based on trust, dialogue and inquiry, peer accountability and a shared purpose, positive change can ensue, as these relationships build collective understanding of goals and collective efficacy which in turn drive improved problem-solving, more effective practices, and alignment of efforts. We also offer evidence on the type of leadership needed by actors in an education bureaucracy for this collaborative professionalism to flourish, arguing for a strong ‘middle’ layer of leadership, such as change agents and distributed leadership structures which catalyse a collective spirit.
Together with insights from the wider literature, this evidence is used to offer a conceptual framework for high functioning collaborative networks. The paper draws on a body of research from EDT on collaborative professionalism, conducted over four years in partnership with IIEP-UNESCO, the Education Commission, Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO), WISE, and STiR Education.

Author

• Charlotte Jones, Education Development Trust