Supporting Holistic & Actionable Research in Education (SHARE)

Improving Programs through Evidence Building and Knowledge Sharing

SHARE is a cooperative agreement between USAID and the University of Notre Dame (UND) that aims to advance global education learning priorities to improve learning outcomes. UND is implementing the SHARE activity in partnership with local higher education and research institutions between 2020-2025. Through SHARE, and together with its partners, UND will advance USAID Learning Priorities in the global education sector as a global good to improve education and learning outcomes.

Why SHARE:

High-quality data and evidence are the cornerstone for evidence-based decision-making. The capacity of and incentives for actors in partner countries to gather and translate high-quality data and evidence into policy and practice in line with USAID's learning priorities varies highly across the contexts where USAID operates. This ability to produce data and evidence that are accessible to decision-makers, and practically useful in making informed choices, is essential for achieving countries’ self-reliance in education. It is in this space where SHARE provides access to exceptional evaluation, research design, and research expertise to support USAID programs around the world.

What SHARE Does:

Advance USAID education sector learning priorities through targeted research to:

  • Understand how context influences results
  • Explain how and why programs work, or don’t
  • Understand system uptake over time
  • Document results for different populations
  • Ensure specific, sustainable, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound recommendations

Strengthen evidence ecosystems to generate, translate, and use data to inform programmatic and investment decisions while addressing USAID learning priorities.

  • Strengthen institutional capacity of key actors
  • Develop and test new tools, methods and approaches
  • Strengthen country, regional, and global evidence networks

SHARE’s Impact:

The SHARE team undertakes deliberate, collaborative consultations with internal and external stakeholders for USAID/Washington and USAID Bureaus, Operating Units, and Country Missions to design and implement research that meets their particular needs.

  • Consult with USAID Learning Agenda teams and advisors to identify and prioritize learning areas and corresponding research questions for future exploration in line with USAID’s 2018 Education Policy.
  • Fortifies linkages between researchers, policymakers, and practitioners involved in knowledge translation, and thus, creates transformational change in educational and research landscapes.
  • Strengthens research ecosystems so they are resilient and can create holistic and actionable research, even in times of dramatic economic or political change.
  • Enables education and research institutions to represent the perspectives of vulnerable populations, such as people with disabilities, displaced persons, minority groups, and women.
  • Assists USAID Bureaus and Missions to design research activities that will measure the continuing, medium-and long-term effects that projects have had on global and national communities.
  • Fosters sustained partnerships between USAID, higher education institutions and national research.

Where We Work:

SHARE is a global cooperative agreement and can perform research in any country that USAID operates in line with USAID local Mission concurrence.

For Buy-Ins:

SHARE provides highly specialized, technical assistance via buy-in services to design and implement education research that supports country-specific priorities, including:

  • Evaluation and primary research studies
  • Development of a country-specific learning agenda
  • Learning assessments
  • Technical assistance in evidence generation, translation, and/or use
  • Sector/system diagnostics

SHARE’s Implementing Partners:

Pulte Institute for Global Development
The Pulte Institute for Global Development – an integral part of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame – works to address global poverty and inequality through policy, practice, and partnership. The Institute is dedicated to conducting meaningful outreach which combines the world-class research of Notre Dame with global partners to design, implement, monitor, and evaluate projects that promote rights-based, growth outcomes for the world’s most vulnerable.

Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child
The Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child, based at the University of Notre Dame, collaborates with researchers and practitioners to ensure the wellbeing—physical, emotional, social, and cognitive—of children and adolescents in low-resource and conflict-affected settings. Using an innovative whole child development approach tailored to context-specific needs, we translate research into timely and thoughtful action, adapt research tools to improve the development of learning programs and policies, and activate systems (families, schools, communities) to lift children and adolescents out of adversity.

Learn More:

USAID Representative: Elena Walls, ewalls@usaid.gov
For more information, contact Tom Purekal (tpureka1@nd.edu) at the Notre Dame Pulte Institute for Global Development

 

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Systems Strengthening
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