The theme of the 2014 American Educational Research Association Conference is “The Power of Education Research for Innovation in Practice and Policy.” What do you see as the most promising educational change innovations and what role does/should research play in relation to such innovations?
I think what we did in Uwezo (described in more detail throughout this interview) was very innovative, in many ways. It captured the imagination of many people in ways that you have not seen any research do. Our work shows the very close link you can develop between research and the people… it leads people to think about something that leads to change.
In the past, we have had a lot of research happening, but it had never been of the scale that we have in Uwezo, and it had never had a simple approach. Research has always been very technical. Sometimes researchers do technical work for technocrats. So you end up creating your own specialized audience that will understand regression analysis, etc., but nobody else will really understand. However, when you
open research up and decide that it is everybody’s responsibility to understand, for me, that is innovation. When you present information in a way that not only captures the knowledge, or the mind if you like, but also captures the heart, then you find that you begin to influence the way people are doing things, and eventually you influence policy making.