What do governments need to scale ed tech? Contextualization, evidence, and the middle tier

Government decisionmakers face a tricky balancing act when deciding whether and how to scale a new piece of education technology (ed tech). They must consider financing constraints, domestic and global pressures, and the influence of donors—in addition to understanding whether the innovation actually fits policy priorities and education system needs. In our previous research, we found that decisionmakers often engage in a complex calculus that weighs the motivation to choose a particular innovation, the feasibility of scaling it in their location, and the innovation’s sustainability after implementation ends.

This research also showed that evidence currently plays only a tiny role in helping decisionmakers choose which ed tech innovations to adopt and scale. And that when evidence supporting an innovation is sought, it often does not exist, is hard to find and use, or is neither timely nor relevant enough to be useful. As a result, government decisionmakers remain vulnerable to global pressures to “go digital,” politics, their own cognitive biases, and persuasive marketing from for-profit technology companies. Better evidence on the usefulness of ed tech innovations and tailored support to use the evidence to make good decisions are desperately needed. The recent acceleration of artificial intelligence in education only compounds the issue.

As decisionmakers take on the work of considering various ed tech innovations to adopt, adapt, and scale in their locations, having an accurate view of the needs and challenges of their jurisdictions and being able to carefully weigh the motivation, feasibility, and sustainability for scaling the innovation are paramount. We know that “contextualizing” (or adapting and fitting) an externally developed innovation to the unique details and people of any context is a crucial element of sustainable scaling, but we have also seen that this step is often rushed or even sacrificed when it comes to ed tech.

This is where the middle tier of education systems can play an important role.

Harnessing the middle tier

Earlier this month, we released the culmination of a year’s work studying how middle-level government actors in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)—the level between the central government and schools that includes subnational officials, district bureaucrats, and pedagogical specialists—engage in the work of contextualizing and implementing innovations for scale. We found that the middle tier is rarely consulted or given much authority or autonomy for scaling innovations but nevertheless possesses significant potential to support scaling impact. Middle-level personnel possess several key assets:

• An “in-between” position in the education system that enables them to translate central-level policies downward to schools and communities and communicate local needs and details upward
• Deep knowledge and experience of the local context
• A strong commitment to education success in their jurisdictions
• The ability to foster local ownership for sustained impact of innovations

Though currently underutilized in many low- and middle-income countries, these assets can be leveraged to better support the scaling of ed tech innovations. In particular, it can help address the misalignment among the evidence available, the evidence the central level uses to make decisions, and the evidence that is actually useful to inform decisions.

Mid-level officials already report being overburdened with data collection and compilation responsibilities—primarily for reporting and compliance—so simply adding more onto their plate is not the answer. But if their data responsibilities were streamlined—prioritizing timely, disaggregated data for select questions (like which innovations might best address local needs)—they could compile better evidence and data on ed tech usage and fit, barriers to implementation, and infrastructure gaps in their locations. This work would go a long way toward addressing the current lack of context-specific, relevant data on the impact, feasibility, and scalability of specific ed tech innovations.

Additionally, the contextual expertise of the middle tier could be used to better tailor ed tech innovations for piloting and implementation in specific locations—including through consultation processes, collaborative workshops, multistakeholder discussions, and as co-creators of scaling goals and strategies. Their engagement can be invaluable in helping to address the common absence of adaptation of ed tech innovations when they are brought to a new location.

Finally, middle tier actors can provide targeted professional development for school leaders and teachers to implement and sustain the chosen ed tech innovations as they are being rolled out. While our research revealed that little of the middle tier’s time is currently spent on pedagogical support and instructional leadership, it could be. There is significant untapped potential here.

For these reasons, strengthening and including the mid-level in the work of identifying, piloting, scaling, and documenting innovations should yield significant system wide gains. While we believe this is true for education innovations more broadly, we think the middle tier’s contributions can be particularly critical for education technology—where interest and demand are high, contextual and timely evidence is sparse, adaptation is often neglected, and deep understandings of local context are invaluable.

Looking toward the future

In a time of limited government budgets and shrinking global funding for education, decisionmakers must be strategic about where to invest resources. Education technology, including AI, offers exciting possibilities for improving learning outcomes, but it is not a magic bullet. And ed tech does not scale automatically. We believe that engaging mid-level education governance more robustly in the process offers a cost-effective way to better expand the impact of ed tech innovations.

We are embarking on new research to better understand this intersection of government decisionmaking, scaling impact, ed tech, and the role of the middle tier in LMICs in South and Southeast Asia—a region that is committing to innovative education improvement, embracing the promise of new technologies, and working to align teacher development with new paradigms of scaling impact. Please stay tuned as we learn and share the insights and successes we uncover.