The future of collective evidence uptake: Reflections from SALEX members
In December 2024, members, funders and friends of the School Action Learning Exchange (SALEX) network gathered virtually for a series of capstone events to celebrate and reflect on the network’s two years of work together to strengthen collaborative evidence generation and uptake. As part of these events, we explored lessons learned from the network, and we asked several SALEX members to share their reflections on the critical question – what is the future of collective evidence uptake for global education, the good, bad, and ugly?
In this blog post, we share lightly edited comments from Martin Henry of Education International, Jean Arkedis of Teach For All and Renaud Comba of UNICEF.
Next week, we’ll share a follow-up blog post featuring lessons learned from SALEX.
Martin Henry, Education International:
The good, the bad, and the ugly — I do think the future of evidence uptake fits into all three categories, and for good reason because we, educators and their respective organizations, do actually know a lot about what works in education.
The good: A lot of what we know has been through a number of scientific processes, and we know from professional learning and development what works. What we are interested in [now] is orienting that around the teacher and how the teacher can access and understand what’s happening for them in the classroom. At Education International, the Global Union Federation representing more than 33 million teachers and education support personnel in 180 countries and territories through 375 member organisations, we believe that education systems can be supported by an evidence base, but that the backbone is the people — that education systems are built on relational approaches. And an understanding of how relational approaches work makes the biggest difference. We know from our work that not only do we have the evidence, but we also have the impact.
All of the evidence we have seen lines up together and moves in the same direction — from the survey data to the evaluation data to everything in the learning circles — it shows that this can work.
The bad: The difficulty is getting systems to work with that because you are putting the autonomy and the professionalism of the teacher at the center with facilitation and support which enables them to do that. And that requires some external infrastructure and some thinking at a government level. There are impediments to making that happen.
I don’t think those impediments are insolvable, and there are many people doing the same work and we know what can make a difference.
But we do need people to get behind us to make that happen.
The ugly: One clear frustrating aspect of what we’ve talked about [in SALEX] before is the tyranny of the RCTs [randomized controlled trials]. We have gotten a bit confused in education – that RCTs are the only method for proving that something works.
We know that this is not true. Education is a human endeavor – it is a sociological and relational environment in which the way people operate is as important as the pseudoscience that you can package around it. So that has been a frustration for me, because I think there’s been a myopic focus on it which has limited our ability to spread evidential approaches, which clearly work.
In education, narrative is everything, and I think you have to remember that the teacher’s ability to work with a student and understand where the student is at in their learning is something that requires thought and time and space – and that you’ve got to provide the reflective and institutional space for that to happen.
That is evidentially based, evidentially proven, but it is not evidentially supported by governments.
I’ll finish on where we are. We are at a teacher shortage of 44 million – that has been stated by UNESCO, but we think it is closer to 68 million actually. And the evidence that we have got across countries throughout our organisation around this is massive. It is an issue that comes up at every forum I work in.
We are not going to fill the teacher shortage without putting teachers and their representative bodies at the center of the discussion. And I think that the only way you can do that is by talking to them and making sure that you take the teachers with you, because if you do not do that, whatever evidence you have got is going to disappear into the background of the day-to-day.
To achieve quality inclusive education, and resist budget cuts, austerity, and privatisation, it is also crucial to ensure that governments allocate sufficient public funding to public education systems and educational staff, teachers and education support personnel. That is the clear objective assigned to our Go Public! Fund Education campaign, which many unions and associations working together across borders to guarantee every student’s right to have a well-supported qualified teacher and a quality learning environment have already joined.
And that takes us to the United Nations, which has just come out with 59 recommendations for the teaching profession which are very clear. Many in this [SALEX] network have been living out those recommendations around PLD [professional learning and development]; around what matters and what makes a difference.
We cannot give up this work – we will not give up this work. We can get there, if we make sure we do it with the teachers and their representative organisations at the center.
Jean Arkedis, Teach For All:
I have a feeling there’s a lot of agreement around certain themes here. I’m inevitably going to reinforce and build on some of what Martin shared but with slightly different emphasis.
I thought about this question in terms of three provocations for where we go next.
Provocation 1: We need to shift the global paradigm around how we think systems learn.
I think we’re still stuck in the idea that researchers or evaluators generate evidence over here, and then it gets taken up by practitioners over there. But knowledge and insight don’t come from research alone. We need to recognize that practitioners—whether they’re teachers, policymakers, school leaders, or system leaders—are sources of tacit knowledge.
There will always be more knowledge embedded in the practitioner community than we’ll ever find in rigorously designed research studies. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity: How do we shift our thinking to imagine practitioners as true partners in generating insight and learning?
Provocation 2: To support this shift, we need to reimagine how we enable learning in systems.
If we believe that systems should learn through both rigorous evidence and the insights of practitioners, we need to focus on how we create the conditions for that kind of learning. I see three key areas where we need to concentrate our efforts:
-
Focus Area 1: Surfacing and synthesizing tacit knowledge at scale
How many of us are part of learning networks? These are knowledge networks. What can we do to systematically surface and synthesize what practitioners are learning—so it contributes meaningfully to the broader evidence base?
We’ve been exploring this within our network by engaging in collaborative inquiry and participatory research with teachers, alumni, and staff to tackle a range of questions. We’re experimenting with ways to bring rigor to the synthesis of tacit knowledge, without losing the nuance and context that make it valuable.
-
Focus Area 2: Expanding what and how we measure
In any system — local, national or global — what you measure is what you focus on. Measurement is a form of feedback.While we’ve made progress in assessing academic outcomes (including innovations in foundational literacy and numeracy measurement), these are only part of the picture. What about student well-being, agency, and connectedness? These are also vital aspects of development—and if we’re not measuring them, systems are unlikely to prioritize or improve them.
We focus on these broader outcomes because we believe they not only matter in their own right but also enable academic success and thriving.
There’s also a deeper gap at the system level: we often lack ways to assess a system’s capacity for transformation and change. Recent work in our network suggests that the human and relational dimensions of systems—trust, alignment, collaboration—may be key predictors of whether systems can improve at scale.
We describe this as a system’s capacity for collective leadership. How can we better measure whether key stakeholders—teachers, families, community members, school leaders, government authorities—have shared goals, the ability to align on a vision, and the relationships needed to learn and act together?
-
Focus Area 3: Scaling up action research
Action research is not just a method for generating new evidence—it’s also a powerful mechanism for uptake and adaptation. It allows teachers, system leaders, and partner organizations to reflect on insights, test new solutions, and measure change in real time.We and others in SALEX have been experimenting with this approach. The next frontier is figuring out how to scale it—to make it a routine part of how systems learn and adapt. We’re working on this through our Research and Learning Lab, which is helping to embed action research across our network.
Provocation 3: We need to ask better questions about how systems change.
Despite growing interest in scaling what works, our global education research agenda still overlooks some of the most important questions:
- How do systems actually change?
- What’s the role of leadership — especially collective leadership — in that process?
- How do we develop that capacity for collective leadership in people, communities, and institutions?
Much of our research still centers on policy and technical interventions. But we’re missing big questions about the human, relational, and leadership dimensions of change—questions that aren’t being studied at scale.
This is the ultimate focus of our work: helping communities build the collective leadership needed to solve their own challenges and transform their own systems.
My final provocation is a plea: Let’s invest not only in how we learn differently—but also in what kinds of questions we choose to learn about.
Renaud Comba, UNICEF
An important SALEX legacy has been its focus on how research is conducted—and, crucially, how it is used. Over the past few years, I have seen growing momentum around research uptake. Yet producing rigorous evidence—whether through randomized controlled trials or other methods—does not guarantee that policymakers or practitioners will fully integrate findings into their work. Too often, evidence sits in lengthy reports or academic journals, out of reach for busy decision-makers. While AI can now offer concise summaries, it often misses the vital context and detail that inform good policymaking.
One proven way to enhance research uptake is through co-creation.
When researchers and policymakers collaborate from the outset, we see significantly higher adoption of evidence-based solutions. UNICEF’s “Data Must Speak” Positive Deviance Research exemplifies this approach, and, alongside partners like Brookings, Schools2030, Innovations for Poverty Action, and J-PAL, we are developing a short online introduction to co-creation (in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese) to share what we have learned so far.
As SALEX’s formal activities wind down, I hope we continue to share insights on what works—and does not work—when measuring and promoting research uptake. We still tend to operate in silos, but even small steps—such as presenting findings at local education group meetings—can build vital bridges between research and practice. The wealth of knowledge generated by SALEX members should be shared broadly, so that others can learn from our successes and challenges. Over the past decade, I have witnessed real progress in how evidence informs education policy. By continuing to collaborate, co-create, and openly share lessons learned, we can carry that progress forward in the years to come.
