Study title

We conducted two rounds of one day long group model building workshops – between October 2018 and April 2019 (n=323) and between November 2019 and July 2020 (n=325) respectively – in 40 schools of Badakhshan, Ghazni and Takhar provinces of Afghanistan and 59 schools of Punjab and Sindh provinces of Pakistan. Group model building is a set of Community Based System Dynamics (CBSD) methods that provides a structured process and forum for stakeholders to identify and prioritize issues through the language of systems. We conducted four distinct activities: (i) focus group discussions (FGDs) to define a shared vision of inclusive and equitable quality education; (ii) variable elicitation to identify multiple factors perceived to influence inclusive and equitable quality education; (iii) connections circle to establish perceived connections between identified factors and identify causal feedback loops and, (iv) action ideas elicitation for participants to agree on interventions to affect the system. Trained facilitators assisted school stakeholders in the process. Visual causal maps were elaborated by children, parents, teachers and school management committees. During each workshop, several iterations of the model with ongoing discussion of connections between factors were elaborated before a final visualization was agreed upon by the group. The building of the CLD and its review allows researchers to gauge each group of participants’ consensus vision of the system. After the conclusion of the workshops, facilitators reproduced the final Causal Loop Diagram models using Vensim® PLE software. We used techniques from multivariate analysis of ecological communities to compare identify features commonly perceived to be central to a successfully inclusive and equitable education system. These methods, which have been previously applied beyond ecology, allowed us to compare CLDs by i) quantifying distance/similarity measures between them based on number of shared components,...