Adapting a systems thinking approach to increase evidence uptake

Promoting transformative change in education is difficult. Too often, education systems around the globe make decisions and programs without sufficient rigorous evidence to back them up. In response, the USAID-funded Supporting Holistic and Actionable Research in Education (SHARE) Activity, led by the University of Notre Dame (UND), funded and managed by USAID’s Center for Education and implemented by a network of international partners, advances USAID’s global education research priorities and contributes to improved education outcomes. SHARE’s challenge was to develop a process that could inform education policies and programs by making rigorous evidence more available and accessible to key decision-makers.

Several barriers impact evidence uptake by key actors within education systems. To address this, SHARE developed a collaborative research approach that diagnoses, engages, and strengthens evidence ecosystems - the communities of interacting people, organizations, and resources that contribute to the generation, translation, and use of evidence for decision-making. The process incorporated Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) principles at multiple levels: the process itself centers external collaboration with actors at regional and country levels, and SHARE has built in several mechanisms and structures to include opportunities to pause and reflect, conduct monitoring and evaluation for learning, and enable adaptive management across countries.

Using CLA has enabled SHARE to adapt the process to local contexts and study needs and make improvements based on learnings from implementation. This is critical not only to generate research that is contextually appropriate and relevant but also to meaningfully engage key stakeholders and thereby increase chances for greater research uptake and evidence-based decision-making.