Gender analysis of the World Health Organization online learning program on Immunization Agenda 2030

Gender analysis of the World Health Organization online learning program on Immunization Agenda 2030

Reda SadkiGlobal health

The article “Gender analysis of the World Health Organization online learning program on Immunization Agenda 2030” is, according to the authors, “the first to showcase the positive inclusion of mainstreaming gender in a WHO capacity-building program.”

Context:

  • The paper analyzes action plans developed and peer reviewed by participants in one cohort of the 2021 World Health Organization (WHO) Scholar Level 1 certification course on Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030), a course developed by The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).
  • WHO’s Scholar courses only utilize the knowledge creation component of TGLF’s learning-to-action model, whereas the full model supports implementation that leads to improved health outcomes.
  • TGLF uses an innovative peer learning-to-action model, developed through over a decade of research and practice, focused on knowledge creation through dialogue, critique, and collaboration, with rubric-based peer feedback scaffolding the learning process.
  • The course was facilitated by Charlotte Mbuh and Min Zha, two women learning leaders at The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), who combine deep expertise in learning science and real-world knowledge of immunization in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Key findings:

  • The analysis included 111 action plans, a subset of the projects and insights shared, from participants across 31 countries working to improve immunization programs.
  • It found that “all action plans in the 111 sample, except three, included gender considerations” showing the course was effective in raising awareness of gender barriers.

This is consistent with the known effectiveness of peer feedback, as the rubric followed by each learner included specific instructions to “describe how your action plan has considered and integrated gender dimensions in immunization.”

TGLF’s peer learning model focuses on generating and applying new knowledge. This appears to be conducive to raising awareness of issues like gender barriers to immunization. By giving and receiving feedback, participants build understanding.

Whereas only around ten percent of learners participated in expert-led presentations offered about gender and immunization, every learner had to think through and write up gender analysis. And every learner had to give feedback on the gender analyses of three colleagues.

The social nature of giving and received structured peer feedback, supported by expert-designed resources, creates accountability and motivation for integrating gender considerations. Participants educate one another on blindspots, helping embed attention to gender issues.

Compared to traditional expert-led capacity building, this peer-led approach empowered participants to learn from each other’s experience, situating gender in their real-world practice, rather than as an abstract concept that requires global experts to explain it. This participant-driven process with built-in feedback mechanisms is likely to have helped make the increased gender awareness actionable.

Gender analysis: what we learned about gender barriers

  • The most cited barrier was “low education and health literacy” affecting immunization uptake. As one plan stated, “lower educational levels of maternal caregivers are more commonly related to under-vaccination”.
  • Other major barriers were difficulties accessing services due to “gender-related factors influencing mobility, location, availability, or quality of health services” and lack of male involvement in decisions, as “men make most of the household decisions while they often do not have sufficient information”.
  • Proposed strategies focused on areas like “incentive schemes” and “on-the-job support” for female health workers, “community engagement” to improve literacy, and better “engagement of men” in immunization activities.

TGLF’s peer learning approach likely contributed to raising awareness of gender issues and ability to propose context-specific solutions, though some implicit biases may have affected peer evaluations.

Overall, the analysis shows mainstreaming gender was an effective part of this capacity building program, and the authors appear convinced of its potential to lead to more gender-equitable and effective immunization policies and services.

However, the authors’ claim that “gender inequality and harmful gender norms in many settings create barriers and are the main reasons for suboptimal immunization coverage” is not substantiated by the available data. The action plans do provide some contextual descriptions of gender barriers and describe an intent to take action. But descriptions shared by learners were not verified, and the course did not offer any support to learners in implementing their proposed actions.

Reference

Nyasulu, B.J., Heidari, S., Manna, M., Bahl, J., Goodman, T., 2023. Gender analysis of the World Health Organization online learning program on Immunization Agenda 2030. Frontiers in Global Women’s Health 4, 1230109. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgwh.2023.1230109

Illustration: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

Towards reimagined technical assistance Thinking beyond the current policy options

Towards reimagined technical assistance: thinking beyond the current policy options

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Leadership

In the article “Towards reimagined technical assistance: the current policy options and opportunities for change”, Alexandra Nastase and her colleagues argues that technical assistance should be framed as a policy option for governments. It outlines different models of technical assistance:

  1. Capacity substitution: Technical advisers perform government functions due to urgent needs or lack of in-house expertise. This can fill gaps but has “clear limitations in building state capability.”
  2. Capacity supplementation: Technical advisers provide specific expertise to complement government efforts in challenging areas. This can “fill essential gaps at critical moments” but has limitations for building sustainable capacity.  
  3. Capacity development: Technical advisers play a facilitator role focused on enabling change and strengthening government capacity over the long term. This takes time but “there is a higher chance that these [results] will be sustainable.”

Governments may choose from this spectrum of roles for technical advisers in designing assistance programs based on the objectives, limitations, and tradeoffs involved with each approach: “The most common fallacy is to expect every type of technical assistance to lead to capacity development. We do not believe that is the case. Suppose governments choose to use externals to do the work and replace government functions. In that case, it is not realistic to expect that it will build a capability to do the work independently of consultants.”

Furthermore, technical assistance should be designed through “meaningful and equal dialogue between governments and funders” to ensure it focuses on core issues and builds sustainable capacity. Considerations that need to be highlighted include balancing short-term needs with long-term capacity building and shifting power to local experts.

However, this requires reframing technical assistance as a policy option through transparent dialogue between government and funders.

What key assumptions about technical assistance does this challenge?

The article challenges some key assumptions and orthodox views about technical assistance in global health:

  1. It frames technical assistance not as aid provided by donors, but as a policy option and domestic choice that governments make to meet their objectives. This contrasts with the common donor-centric view.
  2. It critiques the assumption that all technical assistance inherently builds sustainable government capacity and questions this expected linear relationship. The article argues different types of technical assistance have fundamentally different aims – gap-filling versus long-term capacity building.
  3. The article challenges the idealistic principles often promoted for technical assistance, like localization, government ownership, and adaptability. It suggests the evidence is lacking on if these principles effectively lead to better development outcomes on the ground.  
  4. The article argues that technical assistance decisions involve real dilemmas, tradeoffs and tensions in practice rather than being clear cut. It challenges the notion of win-win solutions and highlights risks like unintended consequences.
  5. By outlining limitations of different technical assistance approaches, the article pushes back against a one-size-fits-all mindset. The appropriate approach depends on contextual factors and clarity of purpose.
  6. The article questions typical measures of success for technical assistance based on fast results and output delivery. It advocates for greater focus on processes that enable long-term capacity development even if slower.

How does The Geneva Learning Foundation’s work fit into such a model?

At The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), we realized that our own model to support locally-led leadership to drive change could be described as a new type of technical assistance that does not fit into any of the existing three categories, because:

  1. TGLF’s model is grounded in principles of localization and decolonization that shift power dynamics by empowering government health workers from all levels of the health system – not only the national authorities – to recognize what change is needed, to lead this change where they work. We have observed that, even in fragile contexts, this accelerates progress toward country goals, and strengthens or can help rebuild civil society fabric.
  2. It focuses on nurturing intrinsic motivation and peer accountability rather than imposing top-down directives or extrinsic incentives. 
  3. It utilizes lateral feedback loops and informal, self-organized networks that cut across hierarchies and geographic boundaries.
  4. It emphasizes flexibility, adaptation to local contexts, and problem-driven iteration rather than pre-defined solutions.
  5. It builds sustainable capacity and self-organized learning cultures that reduce dependency on external support.

Reference: Nastase, A., Rajan, A., French, B., Bhattacharya, D., 2020. Towards reimagined technical assistance: the current policy options and opportunities for change. Gates Open Res 4, 180. https://doi.org/10.12688/gatesopenres.13204.1

Illustration: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

Protect Invest Together

Protect, invest, together: strengthening health workforce through new learning models

Reda SadkiGlobal health

In “Prioritising the health and care workforce shortage: protect, invest, together,” Agyeman-Manu et al. assert that the COVID-19 pandemic aggravated longstanding health workforce deficiencies globally, especially in under-resourced nations. 

With projected shortages of 10 million health workers concentrated in Africa and the Middle East by 2030, the authors urgently call for policymakers to commit to retaining and expanding national health workforces. 

They propose common-sense solutions: increased, coordinated financing and collaboration across government agencies managing health, finance, economic development, education and labor portfolios.

But how can such interconnected, long-term investments be designed for maximum sustainable impact?

And what is the role of education?

Rethinking health worker learning

In a 2021 WHO survey across 159 countries, most health workers reported lacking adequate training to respond effectively to pandemic demands. This exposed systemic weaknesses in how health workforces develop skills at scale. Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, limitations of traditional learning approaches were already obvious.

Prevailing modalities overly rely on passive knowledge transfer rather than active learner empowerment and engagement with real-world complexities. While assessment and credentialing are important, ultimately learning must be judged by its relevance, application and impact on people’s lives and health systems.

Between April and June 2020, I had the privilege of working with a group of 600 of Scholars of The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) from 86 countries. Together, we designed an immersive learning cycle integrating skill-building and peer exchange for those on the frontlines of the epidemic. We called it the “COVID-19 Peer Hub”. 

It grew into an ecosystem that connected over 6,000 health professionals across 86 countries to share unfiltered insights, give voice to on-the-ground needs, and turn shared experience into action.

Within three months, a third of participants had already implemented COVID-19 recovery plans, citing peer support as the main driver for turning their commitment into results.

By the end of 2020, TGLF’s immunization platform, network, and community had tripled in size.

In 2022, this network transformed into a Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030).

Informing health workforce decisions

What insights can health workforce policymakers draw from the Geneva Learning Foundation’s unique work to achieve the ambitious growth and support targets outlined by Agyeman-Manu et al.?

First, expert-driven, top-down  approaches alone cannot handle emergent real-world complexities. In TGLF’s learning cycles, the most significant learning often occurs in lateral, one-to-one networking meetings between peers. These defy boundaries of geography, gender, ethnicity, religion, and job roles.

Second, thoughtfully-applied technology can exponentially accelerate learning’s reach, access and connections following learner needs. New digital modalities opened by pandemic disruptions must be sustained and optimized post-crisis, despite the tendency to revert back to previous norms of learning through high-cost, low-volume formal trainings and workshop.

Third, relevance heightens learning and application. Learning and teaching should not just be centered on learners’ needs and problems to boost motivation and effectiveness. Learning cannot be detached from its context.

Finally, nurturing cultures that support effective learning matters for performance and human achievement. Systems enabling peer reward and accountability build resilience.

Protect, invest, together in a learning workforce

Health policymakers are manifesting intent to act on the health workforce crisis.

Alongside urgent investments, applying systemic perspectives from learning innovations like those The Geneva Learning Foundation has pioneered presents a path to growing motivated, capable workforces ready for the challenges ahead.

Rethinking assumptions opens eyes – when we commit to support health workers holistically, the rewards radiate across health ecosystems.

Reference: Agyeman-Manu et al. Prioritising the health and care workforce shortage: protect, invest, together. The Lancet Global Health (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(23)00224-3

The imperative for climate action to protect health and the role of education

The imperative for climate action to protect health and the role of education

Reda SadkiGlobal health

“The Imperative for Climate Action to Protect Health” is an article that examines the current and projected health impacts of climate change, as well as the potential health benefits of actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The authors state that “climate change is causing injuries, illnesses, and deaths, with the risks projected to increase substantially with additional climate change.” 

Specifically, the article notes that approximately “250,000 deaths annually between 2030 and 2050 could be due to climate change–related increases in heat exposure in elderly people, as well as increases in diarrheal disease, malaria, dengue, coastal flooding, and childhood stunting.” The impacts will fall disproportionately on vulnerable populations, and climate change “could force more than 100 million people into extreme poverty by 2030.”

The article discusses major exposure pathways that link climate hazards to health outcomes like “heat-related illness and death, illnesses caused by poor air quality, undernutrition from reduced food quality and security, and selected vectorborne diseases.” It also notes that “the effects of climate change on mental health are increasingly recognized.”

Importantly, the authors argue that “opportunities exist to capitalize on environmental data to develop early warning and response systems” to help adaptation efforts. Furthermore, “investments in and policies to promote proactive and effective adaptation and reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions (mitigation) would decrease the magnitude and pattern of health risks.”

The article highlights that “transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transportation, and cities” aimed at “limiting global warming to 1.5°C” would bring substantial public health benefits. For example, “strong climate policies consistent with the 2°C Paris Agreement target could prevent approximately 175,000 premature deaths” in the US by 2030. More broadly, the authors state that “policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in the energy sector, housing, transportation; and agriculture and food systems can result in near-term ancillary benefits to human health.”

The review thus underscores that “protecting [public] health demands decisive actions from health professionals and governments” in tackling climate change through adaptation and ambitious mitigation policies that yield health “co-benefits.”

What is the role of education?

The review article presents clear evidence that climate change is already severely harming public health, with escalating threats projected, particularly for vulnerable communities. It rightly argues that responding effectively requires urgent adaptation and emissions reductions prioritizing those most impacted.

However, conventional top-down approaches to climate and health in global health are unlikely to achieve the rapid, scalable results needed. Such traditional modalities tend to be ponderously slow, generate knowledge not readily actionable, and fail to reach those on the frontlines in marginalized locales.

Building a new scientific field around climate and health may take years using conventional approaches.

What we would wish for instead is a decentralized, grassroots peer learning system that can directly empower and assist under-resourced local health workers confronting growing climate-health crises.

Specifically, a digital network interconnecting one million such frontline personnel to share granular insights on how climate change is damaging community health in their areas.

This system would facilitate collaborative design of hyperlocal adaptation initiatives tailored to each locale’s distinct climate-health challenges.

It would channel localized knowledge to shape responsive national policies rooted in lived realities on the ground.

Digital tools would amplify voices of those observing firsthand impacts too often excluded.

And participatory methods would synthesize nuanced community observations lacking in conventional statistics.

This locally-attuned, equity-oriented learning infrastructure could unlock community leadership to catalyze climate-health solutions where needs are greatest. 

It represents the kind of decentralized, rapidly scalable approach essential to address the review’s calls for urgent action assisting vulnerable groups most harmed by climate change.

Reference: Haines, A., Ebi, K., 2019. The Imperative for Climate Action to Protect Health. N Engl J Med 380, 263–273. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra1807873

Illustration: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

Prioritizing the health and care workforce shortage

Prioritizing the health and care workforce shortage: protect, invest, together

Reda SadkiGlobal health

The severe global shortage of health and care workers poses a dangerous threat to health systems, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The authors of the article “Prioritising the health and care workforce shortage: protect, invest, together”, including six health ministers and the WHO Director-General, assert that this workforce crisis requires urgent action and propose “protect, invest, together” to tackle it.

Deep protection of the existing workforce, they assert, is needed through improved working conditions, fair compensation, upholding rights, addressing discrimination and violence, closing gender inequities, and implementing the WHO Global Health and Care Worker Compact to ensure dignified working environments. All countries must prioritize retaining workers to build resilient health systems.

Significantly increased and strategic long-term investments are imperative in both training new health workers through educational channels and sustaining their employment. Countries should designate workforce development, especially at the primary care level, as crucial human capital investments impacting population health outcomes. Intersectoral financing is key, bringing together domestic funds, grants, concessional sources, and private sector partners into coordinated national plans. Global solidarity is required to resource-constrained LMIC health workforces.

Intersectoral collaboration between ministries of health, finance, economic development, education and employment can develop integrated health workforce strategies. South-South partnerships offer pathways for health worker training and mobility to address regional shortages. Small island nations confront severe but overlooked workforce obstacles requiring specially tailored policy approaches.

The severe projected health workforce shortfall urgently necessitates that actors globally protect existing health workers, strategically invest in growing national workforces, and unite intersectorally behind robust health employment systems, especially in lower resourced contexts. As the authors emphasize, “there can be no health, health systems, or emergency response without the health and care workforce.”

What about the role of education?

This article does not provide much direct discussion of health education systems related to the global health workforce shortage. However, it makes the following relevant points:

  1. Chronic underinvestment in the health and care workforce, including in education and training, has contributed to long-standing shortages.
  2. There is a need for strategic investments in health and care worker education and lifelong learning, with a focus on primary health care, to help address shortages.
  3. Investments in standalone health infrastructure will have little effect unless matched by investments in developing the health workforce through education and training.
  4. Increasing, smarter and sustained long-term financing is crucial for health and care worker education and employment.
  5. Regional and subregional collaboration should be explored to bring together resources and capacities for health workforce education and training.
  6. Intersectoral collaboration between health, education, finance and other sectors is important for developing policies and making investments in health workforce education.

Read more to understand what this means for health education: Protect, invest, together: strengthening health workforce through new learning models

Reference: Agyeman-Manu et al. Prioritising the health and care workforce shortage: protect, invest, together. The Lancet Global Health (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(23)00224-3

Illustration: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

Movement for Immunization Agenda IA2030

Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030): grounding action in local realities to reach the unreached

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Three years after the launch of Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030), WHO’s 154th Executive Board meeting provided a sobering picture of how the COVID-19 pandemic reversed decades of progress in expanding global immunization coverage and controlling vaccine-preventable diseases.

  1. Over 3 million more zero-dose children in 2022 compared to 2019 and widening inequities between and within countries.
  2. Africa in particular suffered a 25% increase in children missing out on basic vaccines.
  3. Coverage disparities grew between the best- and worst-performing districts in the same countries that previously made gains.

In response, the World Health Organization is calling for action “grounded in local realities”.

Growing evidence supports fresh approaches that do exactly that.

Tom Newton-Lewis is part of the community of researchers and practitioners who have observed that “health systems are complex and adaptive” and, they say, that explains why top-down control rarely succeeds.

  • The claim is that directive performance management—relying on targets, monitoring, incentives and hierarchical control—is largely ineffective at driving outcomes in low- and middle-income country health systems.
  • By contrast, enabling approaches aim to leverage intrinsic motivation, foster collective responsibility, and empower teams for improvement.

However, top-down control and directive management appear to have been key to how immunization programmes achieved impressive results in previous decades.

Hence, it may be challenging for the current generation of global immunization leaders to consider that enabling approaches that leverage intrinsic motivation, foster collective responsibility, and empower teams – especially for local staff – are the ones needed now.

One example of an enabling approach is the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030).

What is the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030)?

This is a locally-led network, platform, and community of action that emerged in March 2022 in response to the Director-General’s call for a “groundswell of support” for immunization.

In Year 1 (report), this Movement demonstrated the feasibility of establishing a large-scale peer learning platform for immunization professionals, aligned with global IA2030 goals. Specifically:

  • Over 6,000 practitioners from 99 countries joined initial activities, with 1,021 implementing peer-reviewed local action plans by June 2022.
  • These participants generated over half a million quantitative and qualitative data points shedding light on local realities.
  • Regular peer learning events known as Teach to Reach rallied tens of thousands of national and sub-national immunization staff, defying boundaries of geography, hierarchy, gender, and job roles in collaborative sessions with each other, but also with IA2030 Working Groups.

By September 2022, over 10,000 professionals had joined the Movement, turning their commitment to achieving IA2030 into context-specific actions, sharing progress and results to encourage and support each other.

In Year 2, further evidence emerged on participant demand and public health impacts:

  • By June 2023, the network expanded to 16,835 members across over 100 countries.
  • Some participants directly attributed coverage increases to the Movement (see Wasnam Faye’s story and other examples), with many sharing a strong sense of IA2030 ownership.

Overall, the Movement has already demonstrated a scalable model facilitating peer exchange between thousands of motivated immunization professionals during its first two years.

  • Locally-developed solutions are proving indispensable to practitioners, to make sense of generalized guidance from the global level.
  • Movement research confirmed that “progress more likely comes from the systematic application and adaptation of existing good practice, tailored to local contexts and communities.”
  • Connecting local innovation to global knowledge could be “instrumental for resuscitating progress” towards more equitable immunization, especially when integrated into coordinated action across health system levels.
  • It could be part of a teachable moment in which global partners learn from local action, rather than prescribe it.

The Movement has already been making sparks. It will take the fuel of global partners to propel it to accelerate progress in new ways that could meet or exceed IA2030 goals.

WHO Director-General says Immunization Agenda 2030 off-track

Widening inequities: Immunization Agenda 2030 remains “off-track”

Reda SadkiGlobal health

The WHO Director General’s report to the 154th session of the Executive Board on progress towards the Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) goals paints a “sobering picture” of uneven global recovery since COVID-19.

As of 2022, 3 out of 7 main impact indicators remain “off-track”, including numbers of zero-dose children, future deaths averted through vaccination, and outbreak control targets.

Current evidence indicates substantial acceleration is essential in order to shift indicators out of the “off-track” categories over the next 7 years.

While some indicators showed recovery from pandemic backsliding, the report makes clear these improvements are generally insufficient to achieve targets set for 2030.

While some indicators have improved from 2021, overall performance still “lags 2019 levels” (para 5).

Specifically, global coverage of three childhood DTP vaccine doses rose from 81% in 2021 to 84% in 2022, but remains below the 86% rate achieved in 2019 before the pandemic (para 5).

The number of zero-dose children fell from 18.1 million in 2021 to 14.3 million in 2022. However, this number is still 11% higher compared to baseline year 2019, when there were 12.9 million zero-dose children (para 10).

Furthermore, the report stresses that recovery has been “very uneven” (para 6), with minimal gains observed in low-income countries:

“As a group, there was no increase in DTP3 coverage across 26 low-income countries between 2021 and 2022.” (para 6)

Regions are also recovering unevenly, especially Africa.

“In the African Region, the number of zero-dose children increased from 7.64 million in 2021 to 7.78 million in 2022 − a 25% increase since baseline year 2019.” (para 6)

Inequities within countries also continue expanding, with gaps widening “between the best-performing and worst-performing districts” since 2019 (para 6).

The top priorities (para 34) include:

1) “Catch-up and strengthening” immunization activities
2) “Promoting equity” to reach underserved communities
3) “Regaining control of measles” with intensified responses
4) Advocacy for “increased investment in immunization, integrated into primary health care”
5) “Accelerating new vaccine introduction” in alignment with WHO recommendations
6) “Advancing vaccination in adolescence” such as HPV vaccine introduction

The report stresses that “coordinated action” on these priorities can get countries back on track towards IA2030 targets in the wake of COVID-19 disruptions (para 27).

What is needed, says WHO, is “grounding action in local realities” (para 32) to reach underserved areas thus far left behind.

Given this context, this document asks: “What actions can global partners take to support countries to accelerate progress in the six priority areas highlighted?” (para 37).

In response, WHO contends that “the operational model under IA2030 must continue shifting focus to the regional level, to facilitate coordinated and tailored support to countries.”

It is unclear how devolution to the regional level could truly respond to highly localized barriers and enablers.

Such a claim may best be understood with respect to the internal equilibrium between WHO’s Headquarters (HQ) and the Regional Offices, with IA2030 being initially driven by HQ.

What other changes might be needed? And what are the barriers that might hinder global immunization partners from recognizing and supporting such changes?

Reference: Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, 2023. Progress towards global immunization goals and implementation of the Immunization Agenda 2030. Report by the Director-General, Executive Board 154th session Provisional agenda item 9. World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.

Illustration: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

A shared lens around sensemaking in learning analytics

Making sense of sensemaking

Reda SadkiTheory

In her article “A Shared Lens for Sensemaking in Learning Analytics”, Sasha Poquet argues that the field of learning analytics lacks a shared conceptual language to describe the process of sensemaking around educational data. She reviews prominent theories of sensemaking, delineating tensions between assumptions in dominant paradigms. Poquet then demonstrates the eclectic use of sensemaking frameworks across empirical learning analytics research. For instance, studies frequently conflate noticing dashboard information with interpreting its significance. To advance systematic inquiry, she calls for revisiting epistemic assumptions to reconcile tensions between cognitive and sociocultural traditions. Adopting a transactional perspective, Poquet suggests activity theory, conceptualizations of perceived situational definitions, and ecological affordance perception can jointly illuminate subjective and objective facets of sensemaking. This preliminary framework spotlights the interplay of internal worldviews, external systemic contexts, and emergent perceptual processes in appropriating analytics.

The implications span research and practice. The proposed constructs enable precise characterization of variability in stakeholder sensemaking to inform dashboard design. They also facilitate aggregating insights across implementations. Moreover, explicitly mapping situational landscapes and tracking affording relations between users and tools reveals rapid shifts in adoption phenomena frequently obscured in learning analytics. Capturing sensemaking dynamics through this multidimensional lens promises more agile, context-sensitive interventions. It compels a human-centered orientation to analytics aligned with longstanding calls to catalyze latent systemic wisdom rather than control complex educational processes.

The Geneva Learning Foundation’s mission centers on fostering embedded peer learning networks scaling across boundaries. This vision resonates deeply with calls to transition from fragmented insights towards fostering collective coherence. The Foundation already employs a complexity meta-theory treating learning as an emergent phenomenon arising from cross-level interactions between minds and cultures. Adopting Poquet’s shared vocabulary for examining sensemaking processes driving appropriation of insights can help, as we continue to explore how to describe, explain, and understand our own work, large parts of which remain emergent. For instance, analysis could trace how contextual definitions interact with perceived affordances and activity systems to propagate innovative practices during Teach to Reach events spanning thousands worldwide. More broadly, the lens proposed mobilizes analytics to illuminate rather than dictate stakeholder wayfinding through complex challenges.

Poquet, O. (2024). A shared lens around sensemaking in learning analytics: What activity theory, definition of a situation and affordances can offer. British Journal of Educational Technology, 00, 1–21.

Illustration: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

Towards a complex systems meta-theory of learning as an emergent phenomenon

Education as a system of systems: rethinking learning theory to tackle complex threats to our societies

Reda SadkiTheory

In their 2014 article, Jacobson, Kapur, and Reimann propose shifting the paradigm of learning theory towards the conceptual framework of complexity science. They argue that the longstanding dichotomy between cognitive and situative theories of learning fails to capture the intricate dynamics at play. Learning arises across a “bio-psycho-social” system involving interactive feedback loops linking neuronal processes, individual cognition, social context, and cultural milieu. As such, what emerges cannot be reduced to any individual component.

To better understand how macro-scale phenomena like learning manifest from micro-scale interactions, the authors invoke the notion of “emergence” prominent in the study of complex adaptive systems. Discrete agents interacting according to simple rules can self-organize into sophisticated structures through across-scale feedback.

For instance, the formation of a traffic jam results from the cumulative behavior of individual drivers. The jam then constrains their ensuing decisions.

Similarly, in learning contexts, the construction of shared knowledge, norms, values and discourses proceeds through local interactions, which then shape future exchanges. Methodologically, properly explicating emergence requires attending to co-existing linear and non-linear dynamics rather than viewing the system exclusively through either lens.

By adopting a “trees-forest” orientation that observes both proximal neuronal firing and distal cultural evolution, researchers can transcend outmoded dichotomies. Beyond scrutinizing whether learner or environment represents the more suitable locus of analysis, the complex systems paradigm directs focus towards their multifaceted transactional synergy, which gives rise to learning. This avoids ascribing primacy to any single level, as well as positing reductive causal mechanisms, instead elucidating circular self-organizing feedback across hierarchically nested systems.

The implications are profound. Treating learning as emergence compels educators to appreciate that curricular inputs and pedagogical techniques designed based upon linear extrapolation will likely yield unexpected results. Our commonsense notions that complexity demands intricacy fail to recognize that simple nonlinear interactions generate elaborate outcomes. This epistemic shift suggests practice should emphasize creating conditions conducive for adaptive growth rather than attempting to directly implant mental structures. Specifically, adopting a complexity orientation may entail providing open-ended creative experiences permitting self-guided exploration, establishing a learning culture that values diversity, dissent and ambiguity as catalysts for sensemaking, and implementing distributed network-based peer learning.

Overall, the article explores how invoking a meta-theory grounded in complex systems science can dissolve dichotomies that have plagued the field. It compels implementing flexible, decentralized and emergent pedagogies far better aligned to the nonlinear complexity of learner development in context.

Sophisticated learning theories often fail to translate into meaningful practice. Yet what this article describes closely corresponds to how The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) is actually implementing its vision of education as a philosophy for change, in the face of complex threats to our societies. The Foundation conceives of learning as an emergent phenomenon arising from interactions between individuals, their social contexts, and surrounding systems. Our programs aim to catalyze this emergence by connecting practitioners facing shared challenges to foster collaborative sensemaking. For example, our Teach to Reach events connect tens of thousands of health professionals to share experience on their own terms, in relation to their own contextual needs. This emphasis on open-ended exploration and decentralized leadership exemplifies the flexible pedagogy demanded by a complexity paradigm. Overall, the Foundation’s work – deliberately situated outside the constraints of vestigial Academy – embodies the turn towards nonlinear models that can help transcend stale dichotomies. Our practice demonstrates the concrete value of recasting learning as the product of embedded agents interacting to generate systemic wisdom greater than their individual contributions.

Jacobson, M.J., Kapur, M., Reimann, P., 2014. Towards a complex systems meta-theory of learning as an emergent phenomenon: Beyond the cognitive versus situative debate. Boulder, Colorado: International Society of the Learning Sciences. https://doi.dx.org/10.22318/icls2014.362

Illustration © The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection (2024)

The design of intelligent environments for education

The design of intelligent environments for education

Reda SadkiTheory

Warren M. Brodey, writing in 1967, advocated for “intelligent environments” that evolve in tandem with inhabitants rather than rigidly conditioning behaviors. The vision described deeply interweaves users and contexts, enabling environments to respond in real-time to boredom and changing needs with shifting modalities.

Core arguments state that industrial-model education trains obedience over creativity through standardized, conformity-demanding environments that waste potential. Optimal learning requires tuning instruction to each student. Rigid spaces reflecting hard architecture must give way to soft, living systems adaptively promoting growth. His article categorizes environment and system intelligence across axes like passive/active, simple/complex, stagnant/self-improving.

Significant themes include emancipating achievement through tailored guidance per preferences and abilities, architecting feedback loops between human and machine, and progressing through predictive insight rather than blunt insistence. Overarching takeaways reveal that intelligence emerges from environments and inhabitants synergistically improving one another, not stationary enforcement of tradition.

For education, this analysis indicates transformative power in platforms sensing needs and seamlessly adjusting in response. Systems incorporating complex feedback architectures could gently reengage before boredom or fatigue arise. Structures may transform to suit changing activities and aptitudes. As described for next-generation spacecraft, education environments might proactively provide implements predicted as useful.

The breakthrough conceptually resides in transitioning from monolithic demands constraining uniformity, to intimate learning partnerships actively fostering growth along personalized trajectories. The implications suggest education serving each student as they are, not as imposed expectations require them to be at given ages. Flexibility, enrichment, and jointly elevating potential represent primary goals rather than regimented metrics. Realizing this future demands evolving connections of those who teach and learn with their environment, recognizing the potential of such connections unlocking self-actualization.

Brodey, W.M., 1967. The design of intelligent environments: Soft architecture.