Advocacy organizations face increasing challenges and pressures. In a world with shrinking civil space, it is important to support civil society organizations (CSOs) to operate in the most effective way for their contexts, to develop robust education policy that serves the needs of society.

Faced with unstable or unpredictable environments, CSOs need to engage in adaptive management practices, to avoid the pitfalls that could lead to a loss of influence or their operating licenses, or even prison.

Action research is a complementary methodology for CSOs in this regard, as it supports them in generating actionable insights for their policy influencing activities via regular reflection.

Education Out Loud highlights the importance of adaptive management and continuous learning for CSOs in advocacy and policy influencing. By embracing action research and collaboration, these organizations can navigate complex environments, drive social change, and contribute to robust education policies that serve society’s needs.

As part of Education Out Loud's efforts to contribute to the education advocacy field, MDF Training and Consultancy and the Australian Council for Educational Research UK (ACER UK) consortium adopted an action research approach to support effective advocacy and policy influencing among Education Out Loud grantee partners.

This approach includes developing their innovative Action Research and Learning Cycle. The objective is to help organizations improve their advocacy and policy influencing by iteratively testing the assumptions of their program’s theory of change, validating their advocacy and policy influencing approaches, and embracing adaptive management practices.

This ambitious initiative was deployed, tested, and validated through direct collaboration with and support of three Education Out Loud partners across five - countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa including:

• Institute of Informatics and Development (IID) and the equality consortium in Bangladesh
• School for Life and the Citizen-Led Action for Educational Accountability and Responsiveness (CLEAR) consortium in Ghana
• The Girls Education Advocacy in the Region (GEAR) Alliance in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Impact of MDF-ACER Action Research and Learning Cycles in Education Out Loud partners

Partners enthusiastically engaged with the MDF-ACER Action Research and Learning Cycle, and produced research that reportedly has meaningful insights for their programming and organization.

The cycle proved effective for CSOs enhancing their ability to engage in adaptive management practices. Key organizational changes included commitment to integrating research into daily activities and improved capacity for data management and stakeholder engagement.

The social change matrix proved particularly helpful. Grantees reported that this tool gave them a structured way to map out their stakeholders and explore changes they wished to achieve.

The partners showed they could develop actionable learning agendas, which provided insights for adaptive management practices. Nevertheless, they face some obstacles in implementation within advocacy and policy influencing.

These center around partners’ size and research capacity. This likely means organizations should begin small, with the complexity and scale of their research growing with their confidence and capabilities.

Lessons from research on advocacy strategies

The MDF-ACER consortium also conducted its own research, documenting advocacy and policy influencing strategies used by Education Out Loud supported organizations and their partners, and exploring the conditions under which they were effective.

CSOs in this study demonstrated remarkable ability to navigate complex environments and implement advocacy and policy influencing activities. A significant theme was the importance of collaboration and capacity building among CSOs.

The study identified two main categories of effective collaboration: CSOs speaking with a collective voice, and sharing knowledge and skills within their networks.

The research identified effective advocacy and policy influencing strategies, categorized into five main types: bottom-up approaches, youth-led initiatives, direct engagement, media advocacy, and policy document development.

Their success hinged on deep understanding of local context; effective approaches in one country are not necessarily suitable in another.

Learn more

The research findings are shared in a main report, a case study for each partner: IID (Bangladesh), School for Life (Ghana), GEAR Alliance (Malawi, Zambia & Zimbabwe).

Additionally, three open access online learning modules hosted by the Global Campaign for Education are available to all civil society organizations. The modules cover these topics:

• Using the social change matrix for improving advocacy programs
• Good practice in citizen-led advocacy
• Approaches and methods for action research.