Beeline Reader
Organizations with education innovations are designed to address learning challenges and provide children with opportunities they need to thrive. They also understand the need to ground their solution in evidence in order to prove what they do is effective, ensuring that their intervention improves outcomes for their target learners and scales to reach even more children. But, where and how do these hardworking, on-the-ground organizations and ed-tech entrepreneurs begin to incorporate robust, scientifically-based research into their solution? This goal can seem daunting, particularly for organizations with limited capacity and financial constraints as well as for solutions in early stages of development.
LEAP (Leveraging Evidence for Action to Promote change) is an initiative of the Jacobs Foundation, powered by MIT Solve, to address this challenge. LEAP brings together a team of expert researcher and social entrepreneur Fellows who provide education organizations with guidance and strategies to generate evidence and apply the learnings to strengthen their solutions. The 2022-2023 inaugural LEAP Challenge cohort recently concluded and we are thrilled to showcase reports from the ten selected LEAP Projects.
These reports offer the past year’s winning education organizations—who we call “Project Hosts”—methodological research approaches, tailored tools, and actionable recommendations to leverage in their evidence-generating journey. A few examples of outcomes from the projects include the following:
- LEAP Fellows developed a theoretical framework of the ‘science of reading’ applied to Bookbot’s mobile application that teaches reading fluency and a companion teacher’s guide to link the theory to the application that will be used in the Indonesian market.
- LEAP Fellows created a research-based roadmap for Street Child’s programming in Afghanistan, to improve teacher fidelity to prescribed literacy teaching practices in its community schools.
- LEAP Fellows designed a quasi-experimental study and data collection plan to enable VVOB Education for Development to understand the impact of its school leadership program on student outcomes in Rwanda.
These reports, and seven others from the first year, are available on the LEAP website and serve as public assets for the global education community. The recommendations outlined in the reports can be applied to a wide range of education organizations and contexts. Whether you are an education organization eager to apply for LEAP support, or for now are interested in gleaning the learnings, we invite you to read the reports.
The unique LEAP model—which emphasizes cross-sector collaboration between education innovators, researchers, and social entrepreneurial experts over 12 weeks—has proven to be empowering for everyone involved. The fast paced timeline enables teams to zoom in and prioritize the goals of the project while developing close and trusting partnerships.
"LEAP has been an invaluable resource, enabling us to focus on critical tasks that we often struggled to find time for. With their diverse and commendable efforts, the LEAP Fellows have not only helped refine our strategy but also analyzed our data, unearthing invaluable insights that have enhanced the efficacy of our work."
- Adrian DeWitt, Bookbot
The education organizations that participated in LEAP have shown to be open and honest about where they need the most support and appreciate the Fellows’ candidly challenging their thinking and demystifying evidence-based approaches that they may have known about, but did not know where to begin or how to execute. Fellows value the experience of supporting education organizations and having the opportunity to contribute to high-potential innovations in a way that their day-to-day work may not provide, while learning from their expert team members across sectors.
Organizations with education innovations may be grappling with research challenges similar to this inaugural cohort of LEAP Project Hosts. It is promising that the learnings from the final reports can serve as public goods and have the potential to be applied by others in the field who are committed to advancing effective, evidence-based solutions.
The application to host a LEAP Project is open until May 23, 2023. To learn more, or apply to be a LEAP Project Host, please visit the LEAP website.
