Participatory Evaluation of Contribution to System Changes in Education

Application of the Outcome Harvesting methodology to investigate the direct impacts and contributions to systemic change of six organisations supported by Imaginable Futures in Brazil

Context

Imaginable Futures is a philanthropic foundation supporting organisations in Brazil's formal and informal education sectors. To support its partners in investigating the contribution of their programmes to systemic change, IF invited six organisations from its portfolio to a research table. The group was formed in the second half of 2022, beginning to explore key research concepts, led by Jewlya Lynn and Marina Apgar. At the beginning of 2023, when I joined the team, we began a second stage, which opened up avenues of enquiry into two key questions. The first concerns how the actions of each organisation contribute to the development of leaders who work for systemic change. The second investigates the contributions of the organisations to changes in a) the formal and informal structures of the system and b) paradigms and mental models.

Approach

The research process as a whole includes individual interviews and conversations with each team, analysis of existing documents and participatory sessions bringing the six organisations together. The path of investigation for the first guiding question is being pursued using the Outcome Harvesting participatory evaluation methodology. Each partner organisation will collect stories of change in the contexts where they operate, seeking to find contribution links between what has actually changed in that context and the activities implemented by them. At the end of the process, in addition to the specific analysis of each organisation's findings, we will carry out a transversal analysis seeking to understand what the findings of the five organisations tell us about what is changing in the context of formal and informal education in Brazil. It is my role to directly support the five organisations in all stages of Outcome Harvesting with the guidance of the researcher Marina Apgar.