25 research outputs found
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USAID ECCN Policy Issues Brief: Accelerated Education for Out-of-School Children and Youth in the DRC
This policy brief draws from the findings of USAID Education in Crisis and Conflict Network’s recent study on alternative education in the Democratic RepubÂlic of the Congo in order to raise vital policy issues linked to achieving national and global goals for education. That study, after a careful review of relevant literature, involved fieldwork in North Kivu as well as interviews in Kinshasa with key informants from government ministries, UN agencies, the World Bank, the Global Partnership for Education, bilatÂeral donor agencies, and international NGOs.
This brief is intended to serve as a catalyst for government, donor, and NGO dialogue on policy issues related to increasing the provision and quality of accelerated education programs, which provide a strategy for reaching the large number of children and youth who have missed out on basic education, particularly in regions affected by crisis and conflict
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LEARNING FOR ALL: ALTERNATIVE MODELS & POLICY OPTIONS
The greatest barrier to achieving the Millennium Development and Education for All goal of universal, quality primary education by 2015 is the inability of public education systems in the poorest countries to adequately reach and educate large segments of their populations .Not only are significant numbers of children underserved in terms of access to education, the public schooling that is provided fails to provide most who do attend with basic literacy and life skills. This failure has enormous consequences for national education systems, for countries’ human resources and economic development. However, complementary models for providing primary schooling, typically provided through NGOs, have been able to reach and effectively educate these under-served areas and populations, often doing so far more effectively than the formal public system. Yet there are few countries that have developed policies and partnerships within national education sector programs to build on the experience and insights that complementary models provide. This paper reports ongoing research that explores how it is that complementary education models organize and deliver primary schooling that assures children’s learning, and examines policy implications for achieving quality basic education for all children
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Unpacking Twaweza\u27s Theory of Social Change: Citizen Agency, Information, Accountability, and Basic Services
The purpose of this paper is to define the key concepts – and links between them – of Twaweza’s Theory of Social Change. These are the notions of citizen-driven change, citizen agency, information, monitoring and accountability, and basic services. The analysis shows ambiguities and, at times, conflicting working definitions in Twaweza’s use of these terms in its major public documents. We then integrate relevant scholarship to elaborate these central ideas and to pose questions that Twaweza may engage with in the spirit of its claims to be a “learning organization.
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Adaptive Management Annotated Bibliography
The technical knowledge of the elements needed to provide equitable basic education is well established: well-crafted curricula, qualified teachers supported by professional development, adequate infrastructure, appropriate texts and instructional materials, and a regular process for assessing learning achievement. However, in conflict/crisis-affected environments, there are a host of barriers and challenges to providing these elements, including insecurity, weak institutions, inequalities, historical traumas, and fault lines. These contexts are deeply complex, dynamic, often times unpredictable, and difficult to manage.
USAID’s programs, while they often provide pilot and demonstration projects that point the way to system change, cannot sustain the delivery of education services and reform – this must ultimately be accomplished by host-country institutions. However, it is precisely in countries affected by conflict that institutions have the weakest capacity to deliver and support basic education.
The recent increase in the use of the term theory of change by development agencies and organizations arises from the need for more well-grounded and creative strategies to achieve progress in challenging and complex environments. A theory of change approach calls for greater rigor in examining contexts, systems, organizations, strategies, and project designs in crisis and conflicted environments, seeking to understand both the drivers of conflict and ways that improved access to education can mitigate the effects of conflict on children and youth.
The USAID-ECCN Annotated Bibliography on Theories of Change in Development as of 2016 has reviewed more than 150 studies in the form of existing reviews, concept papers, research, cases, and guidance. Documents have been drawn from published sources, institutional and private think tanks, donor agencies, development organizations, and non-governmental organizations.
This document contains a selection 36 studies that highlight the major findings and good practices that apply the concept and practice of theory of change in development assistance, with a focus on contexts affected by crisis and conflict. The documents selected for the first phase of the Annotated Bibliography were chosen based on: (i) our judgment on the quality of theory and evidence, (ii) degree to which they are cited in the literature, and (iii) their specific contribution to the concepts and application of theory of change relevant to education in crisis- and conflict-affected settings.
The annotated bibliography is an ongoing process that is now available online in the form of evidence gap maps that provide systematic access to research findings
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Sundry Papers I
Since its creation two years ago, the Center for International Education has devoted most of its energy to building a viable entity and to starting new programs. This collection of papers represents an attempt to begin to consolidate and analyze our efforts and includes some of the first results of the Center\u27s programs and adaptations of new approaches to problems in international education.
The papers reflect the diversity of topics and techniques which characterizes the Center. They are reproduced for the purpose of communicating with others interested in the field, rather than representing traditional academic-style research efforts. We hope the availability of this publication will give incentive to other Center members immersed in innovative programs to share their results.
The five papers also reflect the Center\u27s three major thrusts: cross-cultural training, the teaching of non-western studies in US schools, and education for national development. Hartwell and Blackman explore one aspect of cross-cultural training in their work in microteaching with teachers in Navaho schools. Grant and Shuey tout two methods of making non-western studies more effective, by using foreign students and by employing film as a tool for understanding other cultures. Higginson and Hoxeng, both of whom are interested in out-of-school education, examine training schemes now being used in the Caribbean and in Mexico.
DR
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Planning for Successful Alternative Schooling
Through a series of international conventions and declarations in the course of the twentieth century, a basic primary education – generally thought of as at least five to six years of traditional formal schooling – has come to be understood as one of the universal rights of the child, and thus as a basic human right. This movement started in a formal international sense in 1924, when the League of Nations adopted the Geneva Resolution of the Rights of the Child. After many years of interim efforts, interrupted by the Great Depression and World War II, this resolution was followed, 65 years later, by the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989 by the United Nations General Assembly, and thereafter ratified by 192 nations. As UNICEF’s report on The State of the World’s Children (2006) notes: “As the most widely endorsed human rights treaty in history, the Convention ... lays out in specific terms the legal duties of governments to children. Children’s survival, development and protection are now no longer matters of charitable concern but of moral and legal obligation. Governments are held to account for their care of children by an international body, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, to which they have agreed to report regularly” (UNICEF, 2006: 1). In both of these international agreements, basic (primary) education was noted as one of those fundamental human rights
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Twaweza Independent Evaluation Design Elaboration of Mixed Methods Design, Evaluation Questions, Key Hypotheses, and Methods
The purpose of this document is to provide elaboration on overall mixed methods design and how the key evaluation questions and broad hypotheses link to specific methods. First is a short discussion of the mixed methods design for the baseline studies; second is a brief discussion of types of research and evaluation questions as a framework;; third, the more inquiry-oriented broad evaluation questions are listed with a discussion about the specific methods and items to respond to them; and fourth, preliminary broad hyotheses are listed with a discussion of which items in the baseline surveys and in proposed targeted studies can respond to these. Annexes include a short discussion on what constitutes evidence (A); the objectives of the baseline surveys (B); a table indicating methods and timing (C); and a table listing overall evaluation questions and methodologies (D)
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USAID/Kampustan ECCN Simulation
This PowerPoint presentation introduces a complex simulation developed by the UMass Education in Crisis and Conflict Network (ECCN) project team. The simulation provided the basic framework of a training workshop for USAID education officers from multiple countries affected by crisis or conflicts, held in Bangkok during the week of October 31 to November 4, 2016.
Simulations are a powerful training methodology that is modeled on real-life situations, but are compressed in time and scope. Simulations are used to provide opportunity for active participation of all participants and to require them to understand various stakeholders. By having to take on various roles participants must understand the perspectives and motivations of the stakeholder they are playing. Simulations lead to lively interaction and more intense involvement with the subject matter. In this training workshop, the simulation requires participants to create an actual project design.
The goals for the workshop were to: Use data and information on crisis and conflict-affected contexts to inform responsive programming. Procure and oversee or manage a Rapid Education and Risk Analysis. Create relevant, evidence-based project designs using theories of change that address key challenges of education programs in crisis and conflict-affected environments, including equity, conflict-sensitivity, safety, and institutional capacity. Apply principles of collaborative learning and adaptive management (CLA) in the design, management, monitoring and evaluation of education programming in crisis and conflict affected settings. Select and use appropriate award mechanisms to provide flexibility and adaptation for education programs in crisis- and conflict-affected environments.
The participants were introduced to a country they had never heard of before: Kampustan. The ECCN training team created this fictional country as a sandbox for participants to explore the goals and concepts. Kampustan was designed to be an East Asian country struggling with equity issues, government upheaval, protests and armed rebellion. It was crafted with care, based on research from seven countries in the region, and included an artist’s rendition of Kampustan’s geography with regions, ethnic identities, military and agriculture.
Participants were divided into groups which examined stacks of data cards for Kampustan as part of a simulated Rapid Education and Risk Analysis (RERA) activity. Discussions were animated as they decided which issues in Kampustan were causes of the major problems, which were effects, and how the issues related to each other.
They refined their analysis into a list of findings, a simplified version of what would be found as part of a real RERA activity. The groups were challenged to find the right level of detail, language and tone in their list of key findings. Groups were then asked to plan education programs for the specific challenges in Kampustan using tools and resources specific to crisis and conflict contexts. The need for flexibility in such environments was stressed.
This is one of several simulations developed by the UMass ECCN team. Previous simulations were used in workshops organized by ECCN in Ethiopia and north-east Nigeria
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Evaluating \u27Twaweza\u27 Presentation
Presentation at the Comparative & International Education Society meetings
March 3, 2010, Chicago, IL
The Center for International Education (CIE) was awarded a contract to serve as the independent evaluation entity for the Twaweza initiative based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Twaweza ( we can make it happen in Swahili) is a ten-year initiative, funded by the Dutch development organizations Hivos and SNV and other donors. Its overall goal is to foster citizen-driven change and to empower East African citizens (inTanzania,Kenya, andUganda) to advocate for access to and the quality of basic services (particularly basic education, clean water, and health services)