Impact isn’t created at a desk – but through a shared process of reflection

An impact-oriented approach does not begin with indicators or evaluations. It begins with a joint discussion of which social problems should be addressed, what people’s needs are, and how change can be brought about. It is precisely this process of reflection that the GrundbildungPFADE Competence Centre has designed in collaboration with the ten consortium projects under the ‘Grundbildungspfade’ funding scheme. The aim was not to force the projects into a uniform framework, but to support them in developing their own impact logics – in other words, to describe in a clear and comprehensible way how their activities are intended to contribute to the desired changes.

It soon became apparent that the greatest challenge lay not in finding answers, but in asking the right questions. Which social problem is actually to be solved? What are the target groups’ actual needs? What brings about the desired change? And how can we tell when it has taken place?

Over the past two years, the impact frameworks have been revised on several occasions. Societal issues were defined more precisely, target group needs were formulated more consistently from the learners’ perspective, approaches were separated from specific outputs, and impacts were described more in terms of changes.

It was only by comparing the logic behind the impact that it became clear which patterns could be identified across the collaborative projects, despite all their differences.

It became clear that the collaborative projects not only address very different target groups – a total of 26 different target group profiles were identified – but also almost always consider impact at multiple levels: amongst learners, amongst professionals and organisations, and at the level of regional cooperation and support structures. Sustainable change occurs where these levels interact.

A further finding was that, despite differing target groups, regional contexts and project concepts, the collaborative projects repeatedly draw on similar strategies. In total, seven approaches were systematised here. The collaborative projects further develop existing education, counselling and qualification programmes with a focus on basic education (1). They create low-threshold access points (2), support transitions between educational pathways through counselling and mentoring schemes (3), support individual learning processes through skills assessments and learning support (4), provide training for professionals (5), expand regional networks (6) and develop transfer strategies to help embed successful models and collaborations within the wider structure (7).

The approaches do not describe individual projects or a fixed sequence of measures. Rather, they form the recurring building blocks of regional basic education pathways. The collaborative projects combine these building blocks in different ways, depending on the regional context and target groups.

The impact journey so far shows that an impact-oriented approach is far more than simply developing indicators or evaluation frameworks.

It is precisely here that the particular added value of the support provided has become apparent so far. This marks the start of the next step in the joint learning process. Following the joint development of impact logics, the focus now turns to how the anticipated impacts can be verified and made visible using appropriate methods.