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Designing and Implementing EiE Research for a more equitable world: Emerging outputs from the E-Cubed Research Fund

Sun, February 19, 8:00 to 9:30am EST (8:00 to 9:30am EST), Grand Hyatt Washington, Floor: Constitution Level (3B), Arlington

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Dubai Cares committed at least 10% of all its funding for education in emergencies to research at the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit. This research envelope titled, Evidence for Education in Emergencies (E-Cubed), is coordinated by INEE and aims to strengthen the evidence base in EiE, by supporting contextually relevant and usable research, and disseminating global public goods. The E-Cubed research envelope contains $10 million USD, dispersed over a period of 5 years. Between 2017 and 2021, Dubai Cares and INEE shared a new call for proposals with a funding pool of roughly $2 million USD each year. This research envelope is unique as a global fund given that it does not designate specific thematic or geographic priorities but rather emphasizes the creation of Global Public Goods, and research that is led by or inclusive of voices local to the research context throughout the research process. The fund aims to support evidence that is “usable” from both academic and practitioner inquiries. As this iteration of E-Cubed wraps up, the fund has now supported 14 studies and is beginning to see the outputs of this research.

The COVID-19 pandemic, global struggles for equity and inclusion, and the intensification of climate change's impacts in recent years have highlighted the importance of ALL countries understanding how to maintain quality, inclusive educational opportunities in the midst of such crises. However, there remains a lack of evidence as to what works, why, how and for whom. While research is increasingly prioritized by the EiE sector, substantial funding shortfalls persits. Much of the existing knowledge and evidence base is program or agency-specific and not widely accessible. Funded research is often driven by global North institutions. This can lead to the saturation of knowledge from certain contexts and thematic areas while others receive minimal support, and a disconnect between Northern-driven research priorities and crisis context-informed evidence gaps. These incoherences hinder existing knowledge from meaningfully informing implementation, and limit the generation of new knowledge due to lack of funding.

This panel will provide an opportunity for a selection of E-Cubed grantees to share their emerging research findings while also discussing learnings from and innovations in structuring and designing research for a more equitable world. Each of these projects represent a different EiE context, thematic area of inquiry, and population. However they each place the population of interest at the center of the research process and are defined by methodologies that emphasize equitable research partnerships. They strive to strengthen education in emergencies through participatory visual methods to assess girls’ agency and their participation in education in conflict-affected regions of Mopti and Ségou, Mali; an investigation of a teacher professional development programme in Sierra Leone; and the production of lessons and actionable resources on how decentralized education systems can achieve disaster risk reduction through technologically-focused crisis management strategies.

This year’s CIES theme, Improving Education for a More Equitable World, invites us as a community to examine “how our endeavors can help redefine comparative and international education in a way that reconnects it with contextualized educational policy and practice?” The projects represented in this panel address and reflect on questions related to CIES Sub-Themes I-II. Furthermore, the Transforming Education Summit in September 2022 sets out tracks for Inclusive, equitable, safe and healthy schools; Teachers, teaching and the teaching profession; and Digital learning and transformation amongst others. We, as an education community, are acknowledging the need to shift existing ways of working to better understand educational needs globally and meet the needs particularly of those hardest to reach, each of which inherently require the inclusion and empowerment of under-represented voices. The panel will offer a space for these projects as well as panel attendees to discuss learnings, opportunities, and challenges for designing and implementing EiE research for a more equitable world.

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