Knowledge Management as a Change Agent to Ensure Sustainable and impactful interventions for the children furthest left behind in Education

By Margaret Wawira

This year, the theme of the always much anticipated Comparative and International Education Society Conference is: Illuminating the power of Idea/lism: Elevating ourselves in time, place and possibility. Given that this theme resonates so deeply with the story behind RELI’s inception and vision, the network submitted a panel proposal for a conversation that will focus on demonstrating the power of collaboration among education practitioners, using RELI as a key model.

One of the proposals of the panel explores Knowledge Management as a Change Agent to Ensure the Sustainable and Impactful interventions for the children most left behind in Education. For many children who still do not have access to education, it is notably because of persisting inequality and marginalization. The interventions carried out by RELI aim to ensure that all children, including girls, children in difficult circumstances, and those from marginalized/vulnerable groups, have access to equitable and quality education and training.

To achieve this, RELI continuously conducts research to generate evidence of what inclusion-focused interventions are working, which ones are not working and ultimately monitor new developments in the field of education.

The network has invested in a dynamic digital knowledge hub that synthesises education research findings to inform RELI interventions. Beyond the objective of making RELI research more easily accessible for teachers, researchers, policy makers and other education actors the hub also aims to:

• Empower individuals to respond creatively to changing situations in the education sector
• Influence education policy design and implementation
• Equip members to enhance transparency, adaptability, collaboration and motivation

As an education initiative, we also want to cultivate a culture that inspires people to share evidence, knowledge and learning for sustainable policy influencing and evidence-based advocacy. This will not only improve readers’ knowledge of this subject matter, but also hopefully improve children’s’ access to quality learning.

Ultimately, there is a growing need for knowledge management to improve performance and impact and RELI is committed to sharing its research and intervention outcomes through multiple channels including local, regional and global conferences like the CIES conference and the digital knowledge hub. And whilst the knowledge hub is still in its early stages, this work will contribute to efforts to ensure that children that are left furthest behind in the East African region have access to quality learning.