Relationship Building within a Learning Network on Education in Crisis and Conflict

• In Event: What We’re Learning About Learning Networks

Proposal

This global learning network focusing on education in crisis and conflict is a community built by and for its members. It is made up of international development agency staff and implementing partners, all working together to increase equitable access to safe, quality education for children and youth in crisis- and conflict-affected environments. Crisis- and conflict-affected settings include countries, regions, or communities that have experienced natural disasters, epidemics, lawlessness, endemic crime and violence, climate vulnerability, and armed conflict. This also includes countries, regions, or communities indirectly affected by crises or conflicts due to population displacement, reallocation of government resources, or diminished capacity. The learning network gathers, develops, and disseminates knowledge, information, tools, and resources on education in crisis and conflict at global, regional, and country levels. The network was launched in 2014 and currently has 3,853 members and more than 12,000 subscribers to its social media and mailing lists. The network’s priority areas in 2023-24 include accelerated education, resilience, social emotional learning, and humanitarian-development coherence.

This paper explores the connections between communities of practice and networked relationships in the context of education in crisis and conflict as donor agencies increasingly pursue policies of localization. Zakharia et al. (2022) find that a series of crises can speed the development of partnerships and sometimes change their configuration to include new members, especially private sector actors who may be able to offer technology-based solutions to immediate or unexpected challenges, series of crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic have not “altered the hierarchies of power between global and local/national actors with the network [studied]” (p. 11). These well-researched findings paint a vivid picture of the Education in Crisis and Conflict (EiCC) field and its persistent challenges to develop models of collaboration that empower local actors while still responding to the immediate crisis quickly.

When collaboration is attempted at the moment of crisis, it is likely to fail because the trust needed to resist incentive for competition has not been built, and the mechanisms that enable equal, empowered partnership are absent. This presentation uses learning from this learning network as a case study of how a community of practice model (Snyder et al., 2004) can catalyze the mechanisms, relationships, and trust needed for collaborative models of EiCC, intentionally built before the onset of crisis. Our analysis draws on document analysis related to this learning network’s history and current planning as well as discussions with network members and stakeholders to offer preliminary findings and solicit discussion from the CIES community.

Author

• Lari Wilson, Education Development Center Edc