How do humanitarians learn?

The most excellent Chris Blattman started the sort of rolling debate that makes the humanitarian blogosphere quite a useful place to have one's antennae out for this week when he posed a few questions - and offered some solutions - on his blog:

First, a lot of people aren’t in the habit of reading, either because they don’t like it or (more likely) they want to, but (like many of us) they find it hard to turn aspiration into action, especially in the frantic business of aid. Second, it’s one thing to read more research, and another to read it critically. Alone. Without falling asleep. And third, it’s another great leap entirely to turn reading into application.

He suggested getting into reading blog posts by humanitarians, absorbing the CARE academy's resources, running global reading clubs and getting cheap mp3 players packed with podcasts like Owen Barder's Development Drums series into every Landcruiser, and suggested that a humanitarian blogger supergroup could write posts, provide podcasts and even innovate some miraculous techy widget to help.

Paul Currion over at humanitarian.info was interested but unmoved. He asked where the evidence was that research, reading and learning directly improved programmes, over and above improving the minds of the humanitarians doing the reading; criticised the writing style of academic articles which are 'functionally useless' for many hands-on aid workers. He also rightly points out that on a six-hour car ride or after a 12 hour working day, the last thing anyone wants to do is 'listen to a detailed discussion of a book about nutrition'. Instead, he proposes:

1. Holding workshops in the field that bring people together across a) different organisations, b) different countries and/or c) different disciplines, focus on core transferable skills, emphasising practical skills that reflect policy. Old school!
2. Creating structures that enable the professional links developed in those workshops to be maintained more effectively over time. Call it social networking if you must, but stop looking at Facebook. This is where the technology comes in – new school!
3. Then (and this is the really, really difficult bit) let these groups define the direction of future learning. Regularly poll staff to see what they want to learn, how they want to learn and when they want to learn, and shape your approach accordingly.

There needs to be some imagination around these two approaches, a willingness for organisations to give up control of the learning process, and a long-term investment that will definitely see mixed results.

So then Michael Bear at Change.org jumps in. He appreciates the initial thought and the critique that followed it, but doesn't think much of the solutions proposed.

Blattman assumes that all aid workers are somehow alike, or at least assumes that most aid workers actually want to delve into the literature and research, and that it's only external barriers - be they technological or stylistic (cue cliche about academic writing) - that keep them from doing so.

In my experience, aid workers are just like everyone else. Some want to learn more, and some don't.

Podcasts and book clubs might entice the first group, but certainly not the second.Currion, on the other hand, does a good job of critiquing Blattman's argument, but then comes up somewhat short in terms of offering concrete suggestions - the recommendation to "create structures" without any further detail isn't all that useful.Instead, I think the answer is institutional - aid workers, like everyone else, respond to incentives.

Especially when those incentives are tied to performance evaluations. If aid agencies are serious about fostering learning, they'll make it a requirement, tying it to bonus or other incentive structures. Agencies could require that aid workers take X number of online courses a year, or organize mandatory trainings and workshops to disseminate the latest research and learning...

This costs money, but everything costs money. It's all a matter of prioritization. If learning is in fact critical to the delivery of effective aid programs, then it should be prioritized by aid agencies. If learning isn't critical to the delivery of effective aid programs, then we shouldn't worry about it overmuch.

On the other hand, Amanda at Wronging Rights liked the podcast idea, which she sees as already happening. She notes that '...aid workers are certainly receptive to new ideas and research... I get emails all the time from people in the field or freshly out of it, engaging with our posts and offering new ideas.' This certainly chimes with my experience - people in the field seem to be starved of the opportunity to debate and share learning and it's the people at Head Office who would rather swallow whole copies of Disasters than sit through another workshop. She goes on:

My suggestion: don't think of the aim of this project as getting people in the field to read, or to listen. Think of it as getting them to write, and to talk. Measure success in terms of posts blogged, tweets tweeted, pods casted, and articles published by the workers you're trying to reach, on the subjects you want to publicize.

Focus on the conversation, and getting it to become self-perpetuating, and the information dissemination/absorption will take care of itself. No one wants to sound like an idiot, so they'll need to process the information before they can comment on it. (And if they do go ahead and put out uninformed blather, then that's a useful signal for anyone thinking of hiring them...)

Equally importantly, making this project about discussion will also ensure that the flow of information runs both ways: not just academia to field, but field back to academia.

So what do you think? Do we need to worry about getting people in the field and at Head Office to learn, and discuss what they take in? Have these guys missed the point a bit by not talking about the importance of sharing what you've learned, not from books, articles and blog posts, but from programmes and the people they work with and for? How can we help either of those things to happen? Let us know your views in the comments field below - I know I and everyone else whose role it is to support learning in the humanitarian sector would really value the debate extending beyond us lot - people who by definition spend their time geeking out on the internet.