Evidence review and stocktaking
towards strengthening strategic
communication for development (C4D)
support to achieve education priorities
Silvio Waisbord, Ph.D.
May 2015
Main objective
• Conduct a literature review to document and
analyze the contributions of communication
for development (C4D) to education quality
and education inclusion.
• C4D is understood as a social process by which
knowledge and experiences are shared to
promote action that “takes into account the
interests, needs and capacities of all
concerned” (Servaes 2008).
Analytical framework
Socio-ecological model - Understand behavioral and social obstacles to change
at various levels:
1.
Individual/Family: knowledge, attitudes and practices among children
and adolescents and families that affect educational decisions and
actions.
2.
Community: social beliefs and norms, social and economic resources,
knowledge and attitudes amongst households, sense of empowerment
and collective efficacy that affect educational choices, decisions, and
practices.
3.
Institutional: institutional conditions of the education system that affect
inclusion and quality including educational media.
4.
Policy/system: policies and governance elements of educational systems
that facilitate and/or discourage inclusive and quality education as well
as positive decisions about education amongst individuals and families.
Review methodology
• Analysis of peer-reviewed studies, books, theses,
discussion papers, and project reports published
between 2005 and 2015.
• Use of mix of four clusters of keywords
– Education (“quality education” and “inclusive
education”)
– C4D – methodologies, strategies/tactics
– Socio-ecological model – levels and dimensions
– “Marginalization” variables - “disabilities”,” “gender,”
“socio-cultural” and “geographical”
Plus concepts such as “impact data” and “evaluation”
Search engines + databases consulted
• Scholar.google. Academic Search Premier;
Scopus; DevComm (World Bank); ERIC; ELDIS;
United Nations Development Program; United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization; Web of Knowledge.
Findings
• 127 articles and books were selected.
• Limited number of documents with impact data from
programs and interventions that take an explicit C4D
perspective.
• Limited number of studies that foreground “behavior
change” terminology (e.g. beliefs, attitudes,
perceptions, self/collective efficacy), social and
community norms, or “social change” framework.
• Most of the literature on institutional and
policy/systems issues, namely the use of specific C4D
approaches related to accountability and community
participation.
Possible reasons for limited evidence
• Limited inclusion of C4D approaches in educational
programs aimed at addressing quality and inclusion.
• Limited evaluation of C4D program or specific
components used by educational programs.
• Limited capacity for designing and implementing
rigorous evaluations to measure the effects of different
C4D components.
• Insufficient funding assigned to C4D evaluation in
education programming.
• Limited presence of behavioral and social change
tradition in education programming.
Individual and community levels
• Limited findings from the search confirm the
conclusions of recent studies - research
studies are focused on interventions aimed at
addressing resource and infrastructure
problems more than psychological and social
problems.
The importance of positive knowledge
and attitudes
• Awareness about educational options as well as
favorable dispositions among children, parents and
relatives influence decisions and actions.
• Families with negative attitudes are less likely to be
supportive, particularly of education for girls, children
with disabilities, and migrant and displaced children.
• Family decisions to matriculate and keep girls in school
are related to their conviction in the value of education
and social support.
• Community positive beliefs about the inclusion of
learners with disabilities in South Africa are deemed
critical for the success of inclusive education policies.
Create opportunities for
community dialogue
• Engage communities in questions about quality and
inclusive education.
• Create safe spaces for dialogue particularly for girls and
women (e.g. Afghanistan’s Sada initiative).
• Early marriage-prevention messages associated with
support for girls’ education among families (e.g.
Ethiopia’s Berhane Hewan program).
• Community mobilization programs addressing social
norms achieved positive impact on girls’ education in
Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi.
• Egypt’s Ishraq program - community mobilization to
raise awareness about the conditions of adolescent
girls.
Institutional and system levels
Impact of C4D on key priorities in educational
programming:
• community participation
• social capital
• accountability
• ensuring that guidelines and policies address
social marginalization
• teachers’ capacity
• access barriers reducing educational
opportunities for specific populations
Participatory experiences in schools
• Malawi’s Participatory Action for School
Improvement (PASI) has made positive
transformations in school performance by
engaging local communities in a range of
activities.
• Participatory experiences in Medellin, Colombia
have produced significant outcomes.
• In Tanzania, a three-year community participation
project is credited for making progress towards
inclusive and quality education.
Limitations of participatory
experiences
• Participation dominated by educated, political
elites or certain ethnic groups at the expense
of the whole community.
• Partisan interests and patronage have
captured participatory processes.
• Community participation reduced to simple
tokenism or subjected formal participation to
special interests.
What to do?
• Need to consider specific context and local
opportunities and resources.
• Successful community participation in support of
education quality and inclusiveness depends on
local populations convinced that participation
reflects their needs and can be effective.
• If communities are not motivated or convinced
that participation would make a difference, then,
participation is likely to be low and yield limited
results.
Strengthen social capital
Premise
Communities with strong solidarity and trust networks
are more likely to develop strong ownership, linkages
with schools and develop shared values about
children’s education; identify appropriate mechanisms
(e.g. flexible learning, support groups, specialized
curricula) to address the needs and characteristics of
particular children which, in turn, lead to positive
education results such as higher matriculation and
reduction in dropout.
Illustrations
• Soul City’s Circles of Support - community sense of
responsibility for all children is needed to value schooling and
learning performance, fostered through local social networks
and interpersonal conversation.
• In Malawi, dropout was reduced by 42% in schools where the
intervention was implemented compared to non-intervention
schools.
• In Zanzibar, a program premised on social capital principles
successfully raised awareness about needs and educational
opportunities, changed attitudes among families and teachers,
increased enrollment and retention of children, and
strengthened teachers’ capacity to work with children with
diverse learning needs.
Strengthen accountability
Strengthening accountability is closely linked to C4D
in two fundamental ways.
1. Information about school performance is critical
for communities to learn about schooling rights
and responsibilities, functioning, outcomes and
other matters.
2. Communities are expected to be actively
engaged in decisions particularly as power is
devolved to the local level amidst decentralization.
Evidence
• Promising yet limited results on the accountability of
education systems and authorities.
• In Indonesia, 400 public primary schools - empowerment of
families and school authorities and teachers, better allocation
of resources and improve learning conditions that, ultimately,
positively affect student learning outcomes.
• Community participation in Gambia not only contributed to
better representation of parents and accountability, but it also
led to improved school facilities.
• In India, campaigns aimed at informing communities about
roles and responsibility in school accountability produced
positive impact in 340 treatment villages in three states.
Impact was measured on participation, teacher engagement,
and students’ performance.
Further evidence
• In Malawi, positive impact on parents’
participation, decision-making processes around
budget, curricula and other matters that
positively affected student learning .
• Similar results were observed in Mexico regarding
the positive impact on educational opportunities
for socially excluded students.
• In South Africa, community participation leads to
the affirmation of rights-based principles in
education services .
Influence school guidelines and
policies
• Participation has critical importance for raising
awareness about quality and inclusive
educational challenges and influence responses
such as specific guidelines, curricula, pedagogy
among community members as well as decisionmakers.
• A first step is to ensure that communities become
aware about specific problems, such as social
exclusion of children due to poverty, gender,
migration and disabilities.
• Participatory methods are valuable to influence
policies across a range of issues.
Evidence
• It is hard to imagine that without awareness about
problems communities and schools had taken action,
such as implementing “safe spaces” for refugee
children, protection for girls in situations of genderbased violence on the way to school and assign
itinerant teachers to overcome barriers confronted by
children with visual disabilities.
• Evaluation assessment have shown positive results in
terms of changing teachers’ attitudes and willingness
to be attentive to special situations.
• In some cases, awareness-raising and participation
have contributed to reducing community violence and
providing safer spaces for teachers and students.
Use C4D tools and approaches to
overcome access barriers
• In addition to programs such as mobile
schools, communities have used media and
information technologies to deliver open and
distance learning (ODL) to specific groups such
as nomadic and pastoralist populations.
• ODL allows children to overcome obstacles
grounded in geographical isolation and
mobility as well as work responsibilities.
Evidence
• Proliferation of mobile phones and other ICTs in
the developing world combined with extensive
and successful use in development programs
offers unprecedented opportunities for ODL.
• Reviews of ODL programs using communication
technologies have demonstrated positive results
in Botswana Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia.
• Studies show that ICTs not only allow schools to
reach children, but they also produce positive
educational outcomes including learning and
motivation
Summary: C4D contributions
- promote positive attitudes and norms in support
of girls’ education and other groups of marginalized
children;
- foster community participation to increase
accountability and responsiveness of schools
through voice and dialogue;
- influence school guidelines to attend to the needs
of specific groups of children;
- provide e-learning opportunities for teachers’
professional development;
- offer ODL platforms for reaching children of
nomadic and refugee populations.
Recommendations
1. Foreground behavioral and 4. Use C4D methodologies
social issues in education
to promote community
programming.
assessments and
participation.
2. Pair policy interventions
with C4D approaches
5. Strengthen evidencethat promote changes in
based, strategic,
community perceptions
community-based
and norms.
advocacy for quality and
inclusive education.
3. Produce nuanced
understandings of
6. Integrate strong
community participation
monitoring and
through the use of C4D
evaluation plans into
methodologies.
education programs with
C4D components
1. Foreground behavioral and social issues in
education programming
• Policy approaches need to be complemented with research
and programmatic interventions focused on behavioral and
social dimensions – knowledge, attitudes, perceptions, self
and collective efficacy, social norms – underpinning parents
and community education decisions and outcomes.
• Mainstream behavioral and social questions that are
central to C4D. Significance of behavioral and social issues
affecting school attendance, retention and performance
such as peer effects, social and economic incentives, and
parental attitudes, and call for further attention to these
issues.
• Formative research into community perceptions and values
provides insights to understand socio-cultural and other
barriers in households and communities as well as
information and perception about schools, education
systems, and policies.
2. Pair policy interventions with C4D approaches
that promote changes in
community perceptions and norms
• Comprehensive understanding of barriers to change across
multiple levels is the first, necessary step to identify
suitable points of entry into a given social problem.
• It is recommended to pair policy approaches with
interventions aimed at changing social attitudes and
cultural values to tackle barriers to quality and inclusive
education among marginalized children.
• C4D approaches can provide insights into specific
community perceptions and norms that contribute to
education inequity and different life trajectories in children.
• It is important to design multi-pronged programs that aim
to support positive community perceptions and norms in
favor of quality and inclusive education as well as systembased changes.
3. Produce nuanced understandings of community
participation through the use of C4D methodologies
• Despite the success of many participatory
experiences around the world, other experiences
suggest problems.
• Need to understand community motivation and
(dis)interest as well as ways to overcome problems
for participation.
• Identify community capacity and resources that can
be mobilized in support of education initiatives,
including communication platforms and practices.
How can C4D contribute?
• Get nuanced understanding of barriers and opportunities for
promoting participation.
• Assess why some communities show higher levels of
participation, why certain members in a community are more
willing to be engaged in educational issues, and/or why
people are more likely to participate.
• Understand community norms to inform how programs may
tap into positive local values to foster curricula and teaching
practices for particular groups of marginalized children.
• Identify positive norms in communities to encourage
educators to reach and work children of different sociocultural backgrounds.
4. Use C4D methodologies to promote
community assessments and participation
• Participatory assessments about local conditions that
foreground local knowledge and expertise.
Conversations about barriers and actions to reach
quality and inclusive education, programs can also gain
insights into local views about educational systems,
school performance, and related issues
• Foster participation as bottom-up process rather than
as a top-down directive.
• Participatory methodologies may also contribute to
nurturing social capital, namely trust and solidarity, by
bringing together children, parents, teachers, school
authorities and other actors.
5. Strengthen evidence-based, strategic, communitybased advocacy for quality and inclusive education
Raise awareness among policy-makers and school officials about
issues related to educational quality as well as
inclusion/disabilities remains a priority for global education.
Successful advocacy for sound policies and guidelines demands
three conditions.
1. Evidence about conditions to discuss courses of action and
demonstrate the value of specific interventions.
2. Strategic thinking to understand and select evidence and
arguments that may be effective to engage and persuade
certain stakeholders.
3. Broad community coalitions for effective advocacy.
6. Integrate strong monitoring and evaluation plans
into education programs with C4D components
• Further evidence is needed to understand the contributions
of C4D to education programs and inform future
programmatic priorities.
• Assess interest among various organizations with strong
presence in education programming;
• Bring awareness about the contributions of C4D and the need
of further evidence among actors in the field of global
education;
• Identify potential opportunities for M&E in current and future
programs;
• Convene meetings of C4D, education and M&E experts to
review experiences in other development fields that can be
relevant for C4D in education;
• Seek to participate in platforms and initiatives engaged in
producing results to demonstrate aid effectiveness.