Increasing the odds of evidence uptake: 3 lessons from global education researchers and practitioners

Why do people do research? There are plenty of operational reasons. Maybe they get paid to do an evaluation, or they are seeking tenure with an academic institution. But for many — if not most — researchers, conducting a study and generating evidence is a means to an end that improves the public good (and not just the researcher’s bank account or CV).

This is certainly true in the global education field. Education is all about building and using knowledge, and studies that try to help us understand how to do that better across different types of learners is a huge area of research. But many of those studies never make it past the point of publication, so how can we ensure that evidence produced is translated and implemented to ensure all students can learn?

In March 2024, we explored that question as part of the Jacobs Foundation and School Action Learning Exchange (SALEX) “Evidence in Practice” event in Barranquilla, Colombia.

In its role as the SALEX backbone organization, R4D facilitated event sessions with more than 200 global education leaders who are doing everything they can to make sure that evidence is translated and used in classrooms, school systems and policy decisions for education. We share the learnings from these discussions in our new learning brief, “Achieving Evidence Uptake,” which provides practical lessons and real-life cases of strategies and tactics for moving from evidence generation to evidence use.

While there is no silver bullet to ensure research gets used, here are a few lessons we heard and that we share in more detail in the learning brief.

What we learned from education researchers and implementers about research uptake

1. Research uptake starts with research design. Too often, researchers leave decisions and planning for outreach until the end of the study, but participants noted repeatedly that setting your research up for uptake should start early. By choosing interventions and research questions that teachers and policymakers themselves care about, researchers increase their odds of having their findings used when the study is completed.

Even decisions like “what methods” and “which evidence to gather” matter — qualitative results and stories that accompany numbers can make a big difference in helping to convince education practitioners to take your evidence seriously. And the decision to collect this type of information needs to come when the study starts, not when it is coming to an end.

2. Know your audiences and meet them where they are. Participants highlighted how important it is to know who will have the ability to use or influence the use of the results that come out of research so that the findings really speak to them. For busy teachers who don’t have a lot of time but do see value in professional credentials, participants from International Baccalaureate focused research and outreach on a new micro-credentialing program for improving student wellbeing. For policymakers who want to be seen as unbiased and supporting learner outcomes, the Education Endowment Foundation leverages their non-partisan reputation to share evidence that does not have ties to politics — and does provide actionable recommendations for how to improve education.

Participants also emphasized the “s” in audiences. A lot of people can influence change, from teachers and principals to elected officials and civil servants to parents and concerned citizens. As hard as it is to achieve evidence uptake, it can be beneficial to cast a wide net with dissemination, mapping a wide range of stakeholders and then using tailored approaches to follow up with all of them.

3. Come with solutions and find windows of opportunity when solutions are most needed. Research is a long process. Many of the studies that our colleagues are leading are multi-year endeavors, which makes it hard to time the publication of findings with prime moments for change. Even so, participants shared strategies to find or even create windows of opportunity.

One important strategy is to make sure that your research says something about solutions and not just problems. It may be important to know that something in the education system is not working well, but without guidance on what would work better, results are unlikely to be used. Further, continuing to build an evidence base on a particular issue can ensure that researchers are ready to act with messages and outreach when a window does actually open. The PAL Network used both of these strategies in their research and advocacy on citizen-led assessments (CLAs), spending years building a set of knowledge and data on how these assessments can be beneficial and how to implement them well until the introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals provided a big window to bring CLAs more prominently into the global education dialogue.

While we can’t say that one single strategy will always get research to the “evidence uptake” finish line, these learnings and others from global education leaders provide guidance and ideas for researchers who want their research to influence real change.

For more ideas and lessons, check out our new learning brief, “Achieving Evidence Uptake,” and let us know what you think!