Newsletter Vol. 10 No. 3: Education Research Networks: Role and Added Value

The analysis below focuses on African networks and their contribution to building education research capacity. The following topics will be addressed: universities and research in Africa; research on education; the role of research networks; the networks' added value. This analysis does not attempt to compare research policies or the nature of research undertaken in different countries. Instead, the aim is to provide a framework for reflection on networks and their role in a context that does little to favor research.

Due to the precariousness of infrastructure, the limited number of research institutions and the lack of researchers available in most countries, universities are primary sites for research. Most laboratories and research centers, as well as high-level expertise, are concentrated in the universities. For this reason, African universities have considerable impact on the general level of research in African countries.

In general, universities consider research to be a means of finding African solutions to African problems, and for "Africanizing" training programs, i.e. adapting them to the realities of African society. Thus, research is one of the pillars of academic activity, along with teaching and community service, but this is not to say that research plays a sufficient role in African universities. Indeed, African universities have an ambiguous position with respect to research. On the one hand, they advocate research and use it as a criterion for the promotion of teaching staff, while on the other hand, research is sacrificed due to lack of means. Rapid and substantial increases in university staff have forced universities to develop strategies that are not generally favorable to research, and according to Shaeffer and NKinyangi (1984), resources that should have been allocated to research are used to pay the operating costs of an institution on the verge of ruin¹. The administrative structure of universities is often riddled with bureaucracy, and hardly favors the development of research. Few books are published by African universities because teachers-constrained by their economic situation-prefer to devote themselves to consultation work sponsored by foreign organizations.

While research on education takes place mainly within the universities, it is also carried out by research institutes, Ministry of Education planning and evaluation units and, increasingly, by teams of consultants.

The purpose of education faculties in universities of Anglophone Africa is to train teaching staff, carry out research and manage the educational system. Thus, in English-speaking countries, research on education takes place in the universities. However, in Francophone countries, education faculties (such as the Faculty of Education of the University of Benin in Lomé) are rare. Post-secondary training in education is generally offered in independent normal schools attached to the universities, while research is generally carried out separately, in research centers.

Research in education faculties has been affected by the considerable growth of primary and secondary teaching staff. On the one hand, because they are obliged to train teachers rapidly, education faculties have set research aside to pursue teaching activities. On the other hand, postgraduate-level training has been discredited by the scarcity of laboratories and qualified staff members.

Education research institutes are most often attached to education faculties, although their prestige is sometimes greater than that of the faculties they are associated with. This is due to their more decentralized, less hierarchical and less bureaucratic organization, and the fact that they have more leeway in how they manage the funds available to them. Teachers and researchers involve themselves more deeply in work for these institutes than they do in work for their faculties, because the former provide them with an opportunity to increase their income and participate in international conferences.

Nearly all education research institutes are supported by foreign backers. Some have developed a sufficient reputation to allow them to collaborate with other institutions in the North, thereby diversifying their sources of funding.

Most Ministries of Education have planning, research and evaluation units. These units, which are often allotted statistical support cells to gather data and predict staffing and costs for the educational system, are favorite sources of basic data used by national and foreign researchers alike to round out their analyses.

While these units do not always have sufficient human resources to meet ministerial demand, they play an important role because their findings are widely used. However, their research is generally descriptive and existing data is rarely used to its full extent. In addition, the research community remains skeptical of their research findings because the people staffing the units rarely hold postgraduate university degrees.

Due to the economic crisis and the fact that universities are unable to turn out sufficient numbers of teachers and researchers, there is a proliferation of teams of consultants who carry out research on a contractual basis. Since they are generally financed by international organizations, their research priorities are defined by these organizations. Paradoxically, these local teams - although they are renowned - are rarely used by Ministries or other government agencies, which prefer to call on foreign expertise.

In addition to such teams of consultants, there are NGOs, generally led by former actors in education. Although research is not their main vocation, they occasionally carry out research activities in areas where government agencies are inefficient. Finally, we should mention the emergence of consultancy centers in universities, such as the Research Consultancy Bureau at Cape Coast University in Ghana and the Centre for Basic Research in Uganda. Universities create these structures as a means of benefiting from the income obtained by teaching staff for consulting work.

Education research networks can be classified according to the following types²:

In the context of the current crisis, networks play an important role in promoting research. In order to justify their existence, they must provide their members with appropriate conditions for communications and information exchange. However, these are not their only qualities. Networks also offer other benefits, and each network refines its modes of intervention as it grows and develops.

Networks enable researchers to take their research activities further, advance knowledge in their field and avoid "reinventing the wheel". Often, the range of specializations among network members promotes the emergence of a multidisciplinary approach. For example, the members of ERNWACA combine skills in school administration and planning, education economics, sociology, education history and linguistics, allowing them to explore the same phenomenon from various angles.

Increasingly, networks attempt to bring researchers into contact with decision-makers in order to increase ownership of research findings in both camps. In this case, the networks play the role of a conveyor belt between the research community and the decision-making community.

A network is only as good as its members' contributions, and its survival depends to a great extent on the effectiveness of its coordinator. The coordinator is the mainspring of the whole structure, and networks are generally assessed according to their ability to make information available and to "network" with other networks and institutions.

One of the fundamental reasons behind the creation of a network is the lack of information and reliable data on which to base decisions. Ensuring adequate circulation of information is thus a major aspect of network activities.

Networks generally combine technical support⁴ and training. A scientific committee in charge of assisting members at all stages of the research process enables networks to institute a validation system, which is necessary to establish their credibility.

Training is principally aimed at upgrading members' methodological skills. While multidisciplinarity offers advantages, it can also lead to blocks due to the variety of methodological approaches in each respective discipline. Thus, it is necessary to ensure that all members have the same understanding of the chosen methodological approach.

By providing researchers from the region with the opportunity to meet, networks promote South-South partnerships. In the case of the South-South Educational Research Initiative (SERI), emphasis is placed in South-South collaboration among researchers from Africa, Asia and Latin America. This collaboration allows researchers to obtain information on scientific advances and innovations in these areas of the world.

Similarly, North-South partnerships can be productive through exchanges of experiences and expertise. Northern researchers have access to more abundant documentary resources and are more familiar with the ins and outs of publication. Southern researchers are closer to the field, have access to raw data and have the sort of experience that cannot be gleaned from the literature. This type of partnership benefits both parties.

The existence of research networks is based on two presumptions: a) that minimum research skills already exist within the research community; b) that problems with communication and the circulation of information hamper researchers in their work.

Thus, a network can be defined as a system for exchanging information and pooling experience. Exchanging information is a major aspect since networks are supposed to confirm and validate the existence of a pool of researchers. Similarly, pooling of experience justifies the involvement of researchers and decision-makers in the same networks. Consequently, a network is not a substitute for faculties and other training and research institutions; rather network activities are complementary to the activities undertaken by these organizations.

In order to overcome poor of circulation of information, networks generally make use of scientific journals, seminars and conferences, and, increasingly, electronic mail. Networks also provide researchers with opportunities to acquire additional training, particularly through methodological seminars held for their members.

Due to the nature of their activities - circulation of information, focusing research on specific problems, using local resources and expertise - networks can be viewed as an alternative solution to the problems of research in education. Furthermore, networks strengthen synergies between researchers, practitioners and decision-makers. These synergies facilitate the use of research findings.

However, networks are only designed to support research; serious measures should be taken to ensure that universities play a more active role. In the current context, one of the major obstacles to network activities is that they are obliged to look after their researchers' basic needs. It is obvious that better research conditions would allow researchers to be more operational and allow networks to do a better at the job they are best at doing, which is to make information available to their members and encourage comparative research.

Sibry JM. TAPSOBA
Director
Regional Office of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
for West and Central Africa
and Leader of the ADEA Working Group on
Education Research and Policy Analysis (WGER/PA)

1. Sheldon Shaeffer and John NKinyangi, Les contextes de la recherche en éducation dans les pays en développement, International Development Research Centre (IDRC)-213f, Ottawa, 1984.
2. See also Réal Lavergne, Note sur les mécanismes d'intervention en appui à la recherche en politiques sociales" paper presented during a Seminar on Social Policy in West and Central Africa, Saly Portudal, Senegal, 10-14 January 1994, IDRC.
3. Association des universités partiellement de langue française - Université des réseaux d'expression française (Association universities partly of French-language - French-speaking network university)
4. The term technical support is not used here in the sense of technical assistance, but rather as use of members' expertise to support network activities. Thus, the network makes it possible to pool expertise at relatively low cost.

Information on the ADEA Working Group on Education Research and Policy Analysis (WGER/PA) can be obtained from: