Learning Together

Highlights

This report shares lessons spanning four years of co-creating and implementing the Data Must Speak (DMS) positive deviance research in partnership with ministries of education and local stakeholders across 15 countries. The research team, through a series of critical dialogues and structured sensemaking sessions, distilled six key reflections:

1. Consistently include school actors as change agents and users of evidence
2. Intentionally adapt co-creation to partners’ needs, capacities and contexts
3. Dedicate ongoing technical assistance to sustainably improve education data systems
4. Integrate and value mixed-methods approaches for deeper insights
5. Strengthen country ownership for lasting scaling and policy impact
6. Plan for adapting education research for use in conflict settings
    

For each reflection, the report shares what was done in the DMS positive deviance research, what the team felt could have been done differently, and shares insights relevant for others. The report aims to support more open and reflective dialogue among researchers, policymakers, and practitioners about continuous learning and improvement, and provides some practical guidance for other teams looking to embed reflective practice into their own work. 

Suggested citation: Herman, Ryan S., and Jessica L. Bergmann, Learning Together: Reflections from co-creating education research across 15 countries, UNICEF Innocenti, Florence, 2026.

Data Must Speak (DMS) is a global initiative launched in 2014 to address evidence gaps and mitigate the learning crisis using existing data. The DMS Positive Deviance research is co-created and co-implemented with Ministries of Education and key partners across 15 countries. It employs mixed methods and innovative approaches, including positive deviance, behavioral sciences, implementation research, and scaling science, to generate knowledge and practical lessons. The research focuses on understanding 'what works,' 'why,' and 'how' to scale grassroots solutions for national policymakers and the international education community.