{"id":3516,"date":"2022-03-08T11:51:29","date_gmt":"2022-03-08T14:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redecomua.org.br\/?p=3516"},"modified":"2023-08-12T17:22:17","modified_gmt":"2023-08-12T20:22:17","slug":"como-a-linguagem-de-ma-pode-ser-uma-barreira-para-a-institucionalizacao-do-aprendizado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/como-a-linguagem-de-ma-pode-ser-uma-barreira-para-a-institucionalizacao-do-aprendizado\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u201cM&E\u201d language can be a barrier to institutionalizing learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Barbara Klugman<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Hello, I'm Barbara Klugman, PhD and resident of South Africa. I was an activist against apartheid and for women's rights, and today I work as a freelancer providing strategy and evaluation support services for funders, networks and social justice NGOs.<\/span><\/p>\n

I work with groups engaged in mobilizing and defending rights for social or environmental justice. In this process, I realized that sometimes the term \u201cevaluation\u201d alone is capable of harming the possibility of these groups initiating or institutionalizing their processes of information collection, reflection, learning and adaptation. Your \u201cM&A\u201d experience is the requirement created by financiers in which they name, in advance, what they will do and what they will focus on. This might work well for a group running an established service, but it is full of guesswork and completely inappropriate for groups whose effectiveness depends on the ability to adapt their protest and advocacy strategies as public and political speeches change. change, and as windows of opportunity for incidence open and then close. Whatever they have planned, they may have to change.<\/span><\/p>\n

The term \u201cM&A\u201d is associated with the power of financiers and with accountability demanded from above that is non-negotiable, as well as routine information collection activities. Yet many of these groups are deeply reflective, conducting research and consultations to understand where they stand and define strategies, and engaging in pre- and post-action review processes that support emerging learnings. In fact, when I lead evaluation workshops, I often argue that effective activists are born evaluators, within complex systems. They know how to read the terrain \u2013 the stakeholders, the different perspectives, the environment around them \u2013 and plan their strategies accordingly. After any action, they ask: what worked? What didn't work, and why? What can we do differently next time? They quickly change strategy. <\/span><\/p>\n

The challenge many of them face is that they do so at the pace of their activism, but when they become more than a small group, they need to be able to document their incidence and build a shared analysis with their institutions and through their networks. Just having insights inside their heads and hearts is not enough. They also need to have specific data about their results and contributions to advocacy clearly documented, for inter-institutional and network learning, as well as to inform their communication and fundraising.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Lessons learned<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

To strengthen their ability to capture their change stories and institutionalize their reflection and learning processes, I stopped using the language of M&A or MAA. I went on to ask about how they approach strategic reflection. Although the term \u201clearning\u201d is trending among evaluators at the moment, for many of my clients it is associated with schooling and education; \u201cstrategy\u201d is part of their jargon and makes sense to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this regard, I learned that when hiring a collaborator to support data collection activities in a social justice group, you need to be careful with candidates whose only experience with \u201cM&A\u201d is making monitoring checklists. compliance in contracts for the provision of services financed by public notices, in which the data is not used for actual evaluation. <\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, these groups should look for someone who has experience in activism and advocacy, with a background in social or political theory, someone who will carry the principles of collective action and an evaluative lens.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Consultation materials:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 To read more about promoting emergent learning, see:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Darling et al 2016 Emergent Learning: A framework for whole-system strategies, learning and adaptation. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 To read more about changes in funders\u2019 approach to accountability, see:<\/span><\/p>\n

Taylor, A., & Liadsky, B. (2018) Achieving Greater Impact by Starting with Learning, Taylor Newberry Consulting; and Honig, D. (2020). Actually Navigating by Judgment: Towards a new paradigm of donor accountability where the current system doesn't\u00a0<\/span>work. Policy Paper 169, Center for Global Development.<\/span><\/p>\n

*Text originally published in English by the American Assessment Association (AEA), on the blog AEA365<\/em>: https:\/\/aea365.org\/blog\/ol-ecb-tig-week-must-we-call-it-evaluation-how-me-language-can-be-a-barrier-to-institutionalising-learning-by-barbara-klugman\/<\/u><\/a> and translated into Portuguese for the Rede blog by Caio C. Maia.<\/div>\n

*The text was produced during \u201cThematic Interest Group Week in Organizational Learning and Assessment Training (OL-ECB TIG Week), <\/em>with the original title \u201cOL-ECB TIG Week: Must We Call It 'Evaluation'? \u2013 How 'M&E' Language Can be a Barrier to Institutionalizing Learning<\/em>.”<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Barbara Klugman<\/p>\n

Hello, I'm Barbara Klugman, PhD and resident of South Africa. I was an activist against apartheid and for women's rights, and today I work as a freelancer providing strategy and evaluation support services for funders, networks and social justice NGOs.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-medindo-o-que-importa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress-wyy8bhlsif5v8gukfr0yhxue.studio.tikovolpe.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}