ROSIE 2024 Conference Launches Global Scaling Learning Community

Peer exchange is a powerful learning tool. Periodically stepping back from our daily work to reflect with others and engage in collective learning and teaching can initiate new ideas, team growth, and a renewed sense of purpose.  

A primary goal of the Research on Scaling the Impact of Innovations in Education (ROSIE) project, led by the Brookings Institution’s Centre for Universal Education (CUE) as part of GPE KIX, is to create and foster a robust learning community focused on issues of scaling impact in education for all KIX research projects. 

Over 2024, ROSIE began working and learning alongside 43 new GPE KIX applied research projects encompassing 91 partner organizations working in 50 GPE countries. This culminated in a three-day convening in December 2024 that brought all teams together in Nairobi, as well as representatives from KIX hubs and the KIX implementation team at the International Development Research Centre, to build relationships, share knowledge, and reflect on what it takes to research scaling impact within education systems. 

All participants engaged both as learners and as teachers, sharing their own experiences, giving and seeking advice, and considering questions collaboratively. The wide variety of expertise, roles, and geographies represented provided a huge richness to the discussions and experiences shared. Through a variety of interactive activities, participants in different groupings small and large dug into shared questions such as:

• What does it mean to treat scaling impact as not necessarily about reach or numbers of locations and participants, but as about growing and deepening impact?  

• How do we prioritize the needs, strengths, and capacity levels of education practitioners, community participants, and other ‘users’ who are often the key that unlocks scaling success?  

• What does it mean to truly prioritize equity considerations in scaling impact and research? 

Participants responded with great enthusiasm to the opportunity to spend several days with each other around shared topics of interest and expressed excitement for what the ROSIE global learning community might accomplish in 2025. In the coming year, CUE looks forward to hosting virtual deep-dive discussions and need-based workshops between small groups and pairs of teams, thematic cohorts, and the entire community, to collectively deepen our knowledge and understanding of the scaling process, its accompanying research, and the fact this this hard work is a collective effort. 

To learn more about the ROSIE project and its outputs, check out this web-page.