Reflecting on EdTech Complexities and Future Conversations

Growing Evidence, Growing Impact: How EdTech Hub Connects the Local and Global with Amal Hayat and Asad Rahman

As education systems around the world navigate increasing challenges from climate disruptions and deepening inequality to examining the impact of emerging technologies, there is a need for clear, actionable evidence on what works in EdTech. Policymakers and decision-makers are often forced to act without contextual insights and rigorous evidence to guide their choices. This evidence gap is particularly notable in regions with limited infrastructure, rapidly evolving needs, and pressures to improve learning outcomes. EdTech Hub was created in response to this need. Launched in 2019 and funded by FCDO, the World Bank, UNICEF, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, EdTech Hub is a global research partnership that bridges evidence and practice to help stakeholders make evidence-backed decisions about the use of technology in education. Through the combined expertise of its consortium partners in research, innovation, and stakeholder engagement, EdTech Hub’s work has spanned seven focus countries as well as a number of regions to address long-standing as well as emerging needs in education, locally and globally.

This episode focuses on EdTech Hub’s approach through the lens of its work in one of its focus countries, Pakistan, and how local and global connections are central to its impact. In many ways the country is a great microcosm of the EdTech Hub approach - a thriving EdTech ecosystem, support of public, private and development sectors, and the complex challenges of implementation, scale and climate vulnerabilities - Pakistan offers a compelling snapshot of how local and global dynamics intersect in the education space. We will also broaden the lens and draw connections of the work in Pakistan with the Hub’s regional and global work, where the need for contextual, grounded research remains high. This is particularly pertinent as emerging technologies like AI gain rapid attention and raise questions on the effectiveness of new tools as well as concerns about their impact, while the system faces increasing threats from disruptions to education. We discuss how the Hub is contributing to the evidence base by diving into new thematic areas and engaging with a diverse range of stakeholders, including governments, researchers, implementers, and EdTech entrepreneurs. This contextually-rooted work helps bridge the gap between local realities and global research and innovation making way for more equitable, effective, and evidence-informed uses of EdTech.

Readings and Resources:

• For support with your EdTech research, implementation, and innovation, keep updated with our publications from our evidence library.
• Understand “How EdTech Can Be Used to Help Address the Global Learning Crisis” in our blog.

Episode Guests

Amal Hayat works across EdTech Hub’s portfolio in Asia and beyond, where her focus is on supporting EdTech initiatives by strengthening implementation, and advancing evidence-based approaches to improving learning outcomes - particularly for marginalized children, out-of-school youth, and those affected by emergencies and climate change. She holds a Master’s in Technology, Innovation, and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and brings prior experience in instructional design, educational consulting, and user research, to offer a learner-centered, evidence-informed perspective to her work in EdTech. Amal views supporting EdTech rooted in a specific context as inherently interdisciplinary - and is interested in exploring intersections with climate, equity, innovation and technology and policy systems. Her work bridges research and practice, helping governments, implementers, and partners navigate complexity and use evidence to design evidence-informed and  context-sensitive EdTech implementation.

Asad Rahman is the Practice Lead for Venturing at Brink where he designs funds, manages portfolios, and works side-by-side to help ideas grow and leads the EdTech Hub’s Sandbox approach, supporting teams to test and grow EdTech interventions, and share what we’re learning with the world. He’s passionate about the appropriateness and ethics of different technologies in solving the global learning crisis.

Asad has many years of experience supporting growth and change in all types of organisations. Prior to this, he worked in strategy consulting and corporate strategy and innovation for a large professional services firm. He learnt that shifting how big companies work is about shifting the behaviours, incentives and mechanisms around people. So, he joined Brink as its first employee to dive deeper into how to do that.

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