Project Type
ResearchFacts & Figures
LOCATIONS GLOBALLY
Botswana, Jordan, Philippines, Tanzania, U.S.
REGIONS IN CÔTE D’IVOIRE
Rural areas and national integration
TIMELINE
2018–2021
TARGETED POPULATION
Key stakeholders in the education ecosystem, including policymakers, practitioners, and funders
Partners
About the project
Millions Learning, a project of the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution, explores how to address the scope of global education challenges by scaling effective and innovative initiatives and improving system-wide approaches. CUE has launched a series of Real-time Scaling Labs with local partners around the world—including in Côte d’Ivoire in partnership with TRECC—to generate more evidence and provide practical recommendations around the process of scaling in education, encouraging a stronger link between research and practice.
Challenge
While there is growing evidence around which educational strategies improve children’s learning, much less is known about how to translate this into improved policies and practices at scale. Scaling quality education requires more than simply identifying effective interventions. It takes a combination of technical and political strategies, mechanisms to accelerate the adoption of new practices, and strengthening of local capacities for successful adaptation and scale. More evidence is needed on the process of scaling as well as practical guidance on how to achieve it.
Solution
The Real-time Scaling Lab in Côte d’Ivoire is an applied research project to learn from, document, and support the scaling of effective education practices in the Ivorian system. It brings together key stakeholders in the education ecosystem in Côte d’Ivoire, including government representatives and those involved with the implementation and scaling of the TRECC pilots, to systematically plan for and reflect on scaling goals and strategies.
More specifically, the lab supports the process of expanding and deepening the impact of the TRECC pilots, including through exploring the potential for national adaptation and integration, and enhancing local stakeholders’ capacity to scale evidence-based initiatives that improve learning. It provides a neutral and structured space to discuss shared challenges and opportunities faced in scaling evidence-based solutions, discover the underlying causes of those challenges, and identify and adapt approaches to address these issues based on real-time data and learning.
The lab shares findings and recommendations for scaling quality education interventions on an ongoing basis locally, nationally, and globally, and develops tools targeted for policymakers, practitioners, and funders to offer practical guidance on how best to scale evidence-based approaches in education.
Results to date
A brief published in 2020 provides a synthesis of emerging insights and learning from the Real-time Scaling Labs to date (June 2018-June 2020).
Scientific evidence
The Real-time Scaling Labs approach and methodology are drawn from a variety of sources, including:
- extensive background research on collective impact and adaptive learning mechanisms;
- a review of a wide range of methodological approaches, including improvement science and systems thinking;
- the Millions Learning: Scaling up quality education in developing countries report and other scaling literature;
- input from policymakers, practitioners, funders, and researchers from around the world.
