ChangeArea_Documentation_testing

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CCAFS-ILRI Workshop on Communications and Social Learning in Climate Change

8-10 May 2012
ILRI Campus, Addis Ababa

Working group: documentation and testing of social learning

This group was represented by Jorge Tafur-Chavez.

(During the 'foundational' workshop of May 2012, five priority change areas were identified, which later formed a major part of the CCSL agenda - as mentioned in a synthesis paper published after the workshop. This page relates the unpolished discussion notes from the working group that defined the agenda for this change area, for the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security [CCAFS] and more broadly for the CCSL group. Each of these five change areas remains an important aspect of the CCSL strategy).

See the working group presentations:

Presentation

Why documentation?

  • Analyse / test social learning as a tool
  • Inform researchers and policy community (and convince them) on the basis of evidence
  • Improve the practice itself – further developing the learning process

Activities


1. Inventory, selection of cases
  • Based on USP
  • Based on criteria like success or failure, finished or ongoing, number of cases, inside or outside the CGIAR system
Who can help:
  • CGIAR Bangladesh simultaneous cases
  • PROLINNOVA

2. Selection of participants, and invitation
  • As observers and
  • as participants
Who: Invite and involve
  • “owners”
  • researchers
  • “champions”
Keeping in mind social differentiation and representativeness

3. Description
  • Context, Baseline
  • Activities
  • Process, Results
  • Outputs
  • Outcome : Has SL reached its goal?
How?
  • Collection of information
  • Field visits

4. Analysis (testing)

Focusing on different categories:
  • Knowledge
  • Attitudes
  • Skills
  • Practice
(paying attention in each case to social differentiation)

What:
  • Mechanism of causality
  • Attribution
How:
  • Analytical framework (eg. context + mechanism = outcome, causal process tracing)
  • Selecting indicators
  • (On the basis of data, or pre-defined, according to goal or USP)

5. Writing, sharing and dissemination
Different levels:
  • Participants of the process
  • Other CCAFS
  • “Outside world”
Who:
  • Researchers:
    • Journals
    • Conferences
  • Practitioners:
    • “Farming Matters”
    • Share Fair
    • Workshops
    • Radio, videos
    • Cross visits
  • Policy makers
    • Briefs
(in addition to involving them all in the process itself)

Time frame: 2 or 3 years – learning / 4 to 10 years – change.

Roles: Facilitators, researchers, media people.

Role for CCAFS:
  • Selecting cases
  • Joining the process
  • Funding and logistics
  • Networking
  • Dissemination

Budget: per case


Feedback from the peer review group:
  • What kind of case might be looked at?
  • How will that be different from network evaluators?