The authors examine how the Center for Universal Education (CUE) interacted with its network of international partners to help accelerate educational progress. This analysis is aimed at summarizing how CUE uses its network and exploring what CUE staff believe to be key facilitators of their work. The authors combine data from three workstreams to make inferences about CUE’s network engagement activities as a whole.

Facilitating Evidence-to-Practice Work in Global Education

A Case Study of the Center for Universal Education's Network of Professional Collaboration

Benjamin K. Master, Brian Phillips, Elaine Lin Wang, Rakesh Pandey

ResearchPublished Jan 21, 2025

The authors examine how the Center for Universal Education (CUE) interacted with its network of international partners to help accelerate educational progress. This analysis is aimed at summarizing how CUE uses its network and exploring what CUE staff believe to be key facilitators of their work. The authors reference data collected by CUE about the scope and nature of its collaborations with individuals and organizations during its BHP Foundation–funded work, coupled with insights from interviews with CUE staff. These findings may be relevant to the BHP Foundation, CUE, and other organizations that seek to engage networks of organizations and individuals to promote improvement in education systems.

CUE engaged in three primary workstreams as part of its BHP Foundation–sponsored work. Each workstream focused on a different aspect of global evidence-to-practice education work. The authors combine data from these three workstreams to make inferences about CUE's network engagement activities as a whole.

Key Findings

  • CUE relied on a large, global network of professional contacts to facilitate collaboration among educational systems that face common challenges and to conduct applied research on efforts to scale educational interventions.
  • CUE used its network to bring global resources, expertise, and attention to bear to help accelerate local improvement efforts.
  • At the outset, CUE tended to work more with globally oriented organizations to help identify which local actors were tackling shared challenges in promising ways.
  • CUE shifted toward studying and assisting local networks of organizations that were working to promote educational system improvements. CUE staff described close collaboration with local government partners as essential to this work.
  • Global networks may be most useful for identifying potential solutions and for promoting learning and knowledge sharing among engaged actors. Such networks are likely less useful for directly driving or sustaining changes in specific local educational systems.

Topics

Document Details

Citation

RAND Style Manual

Master, Benjamin K., Brian Phillips, Elaine Lin Wang, and Rakesh Pandey, Facilitating Evidence-to-Practice Work in Global Education: A Case Study of the Center for Universal Education's Network of Professional Collaboration, RAND Corporation, RR-A239-10, 2025. As of May 1, 2025: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA239-10.html

Chicago Manual of Style

Master, Benjamin K., Brian Phillips, Elaine Lin Wang, and Rakesh Pandey, Facilitating Evidence-to-Practice Work in Global Education: A Case Study of the Center for Universal Education's Network of Professional Collaboration. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2025. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA239-10.html.
BibTeX RIS

Research conducted by

This research was sponsored by the BHP Foundation and conducted by RAND Education and Labor.

This publication is part of the RAND research report series. Research reports present research findings and objective analysis that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND research reports undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity.

RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.