ITSF+4054+Education+and+Strategic+Planning

=Spring 2012 =

Professor: Gita Steiner-Khamsi (TC)

Course description
Strategic planning has experienced a boom in international educational development over the past few years. The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005) requires that reform priorities or education sector strategies are developed and owned by recipient governments in the global South. Strategic planning is seen as an effective tool for strengthening the planning capacity of those governments that receive development assistance funds. These techniques serve as instruments for formulating goals and reform strategies and for actively steering the reform process and managing change. In other words, strategic planning is supposed to be a participatory approach at its best and ensure that educational reforms are driven by governments and civil society organizations in the global South and not dictated by donors and development partners in the North. Throughout the semester, ample time will be given to discuss examples from international policy work and to draw conclusions for work in international education development.

It is an applied course that builds students’ knowledge and skills in strategic planning and organizational development. We will develop, over the course of the semester, a comprehensive and data based strategic plan for two organizations based on:


 * Organizational analysis
 * Environmental scan/market analysis, analysis of beneficiaries/users
 * Needs assessment, log frames, SWOT analysis
 * Visualization exercises
 * Planning, projection and benchmarking techniques
 * Scenario planning
 * Quality assurance mechanisms and monitoring and evaluation methods

During this semester, a special emphasis will be placed on scenario planning.

We will apply strategic planning to two organizations that are currently undergoing a process of change. Assignments for the course will require students to do research on the case (baseline analysis), engage in consensus building exercises, and develop, in collaboration with stakeholders from the organizations, future scenarios. Students are expected to work in groups, be process oriented and exhibit tolerance for ambiguity given the real life context of the assignments.

Review
Not available

Student contact information
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">Not available