Strengthening the Evidence Based Practice of Educational CSOs

The Education Support Program of the Open Society Institute supports 9 selected organizations from Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Brazil, Hungary, Namibia, Poland, Romania, and South Africa to partner in a project called ‘ Strengthening the Evidence Based Practice of Educational CSOs'. The aim of the project is to develop and test data collection strategies for educational CSOs in order to maximize the organizational and social value and utility of the data emerging from their daily work.

The primary motivation of this initiative is to develop information gathering protocols and strategies for CSOs so that the CSOs' interventions in the field of educational service delivery are improved and serve as valid sources of systematic social data.

Thus, the Strengthening of the Evidence Based Practice of Educational CSOs' Initiative is a research program for developing the strategic capacity to use practice based learning activities and for developing instrument-testing.

FRCCF will elaborate a methodology and will test it in 5 vocational schools from Cluj-Napoca (on sample of 500 pupils) in order to improve the levels of educational and social inclusion of children who belong to disadvantaged/marginalized communities, to identify the main obstacles that impede successful school and classroom inclusion of the pupils with disadvantaged background and to formulate recommendations for local policy-makers.

The project running time is: January – August 2011.