The Role of Research 'for' and 'about' Scaling Education Innovations. ROSIE Thematic Reflection Brief

To support and better understand how to scale effectively, in 2020, the Millions Learning project at the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings joined the Global Partnership for Education's (GPE) Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX), a joint partnership between GPE and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), to facilitate a cross-national, multiteam, design-based research and professional support initiative called Research on Scaling the Impact of Innovations in Education (ROSIE). Since 2021, ROSIE has brought together 15 researcher and practitioner teams working in 30 low- and middle-income countries to study the process of scaling education initiatives for impact. This brief reflects on the 15 KIX teams' experiences to shed light on the role of research in the scaling process. The brief distinguishes between research for scaling and research about the scaling process itself, discusses different ways KIX-ROSIE teams are conducting and using research in their scaling work, and identifies some of the research challenges and solutions that emerged.