Active Learning and Development Assistance

Active learning and development assistance
David Ellerman Stephen Denning and Nagy Hanna
Introduction
Knowledge management in the World Bank and other development assistance agencies has always been doubly challenging. The first challenge is the usual one of knowledge management and learning for the members of the organization. The second challenge is even more daunting the challenge of fostering learning and knowledge-based transformation in the developing countries. For instance, when the World Bank is considered as a knowledge organization (and not just a lending organization) then the emphasis is on that second challenge of client learning[1]. All educational institutions face a similar double challenge; teachers need to learn how to do their job better, but that job is to foster learning in their students. In this essay, we focus principally on the second challenge, the promoting of active development-oriented learning in the developing countries, and then we can draw implications for the original challenge of knowledge management and organizational learning in the development agency itself.
The authors David Ellerman is a Senior Economist, Stephen Denning is Program Director, Knowledge Management and Nagy Hanna is a Lead Corporate Strategist, all at the World Bank, Washington DC, USA. Keywords Narratives, Learning styles, Knowledge management, Economic growth, Development agencies Abstract Examines assistance to economic and social development as a problem in knowledge management (KM) and focuses on how the World Bank promotes developmental learning in developing countries. Since much of the knowledge about successful practices is tacit and local, the best model for knowledge transfer is less hub to spokes, or North to South, and more South to South, with the development agency in more of a broker role (instead of a ``high priest'' disseminating truths). The communication of the context of knowledge requires narrative modes of communication to supplement abstract forms of thought. Concludes that the complexity and uncertainty of development work entails that projects be designed in a highly adaptive learning mode as opposed to a blueprint mode. Shows how the best laid KM plans can be frustrated by organizational `ìmperatives'' and identifies some of those barriers to knowledge-based development assistance. Electronic access The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emerald-library.com/ft
Passive and active learning

In pedagogy, the distinction between passive and active learning is basic. Often the standard or default model of the teacherstudent relationship is one where the teacher has the active role of pouring knowledge into the student as a passive vessel and then testing that the knowledge was retained. Those who perhaps have not delved into pedagogy or related subject matters might well just take this model of teaching and learning as an obvious given; it is just a matter of improving teacher effectiveness, student motivation, and test scores. Yet there is a very different model of the teacher-learner relationship that represents a Copernican shift from the teacher-centered/passive-learning model to a learner-centered/active-learning model. In the latter model, the teacher is not passive but has a much more subtle role of indirectly fostering, enabling, and catalyzing learning in the learners. The classical archetype for the teacher in the active learning model was Socrates. Socrates could not ``transmit'' knowledge as from teacher to student because he had what is now known as ``Socratic ignorance''.
Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 5 . Number 2 . 2001 . pp. 171179 # MCB University Press . ISSN 1367-3270
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David Ellerman, Stephen Denning and Nagy Hanna
Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 5 . Number 2 . 2001 . 171179
Instead of ``disseminating knowledge'', Socrates would engage his interlocutors in a dialogue about the topic at hand. He would ask pointed questions to show the shortcomings in the conventional wisdom and thus he would try to catalyze his dialogical partners into thinking for themselves to take an active role in thinking through a question or problem rather than just reciting the orthodox views poured into people by the ambient society and its formative institutions. Socrates also helped demonstrate the fallacy of assuming that people want to learn. Thus the Athenian citizens whom Socrates pursued with his questions eventually had him put to death for his troubles. Plato had more success in communicating Socrates' thinking than Socrates himself, by using a combination of narrative and abstract modes of communication in his dialogues. Narrative modes of communication are inherently collaborative and can encourage an interest in learning (Denning, 2000). It is no easy task to map this classical archetype of the Socratic teacher fostering active learning into a modern institutionalized pedagogy for schools, universities, and adult education organizations. The problems of implementing an active learning model in formal educational institutions are, however, dwarfed by the challenges of using the active learning model in knowledge-based development assistance. The organized attempt of the developed world (the ``North'' or ``First World'') to assist the poorer countries (the ``South'' or ``Third World'') is conventionally dated only from the middle of the twentieth century (although it builds on earlier colonization schemes which combined advancement of the colonized peoples along with political control, in varying degrees). If we conceptualize the principal purpose of this modern developmental effort as ``social learning writ large'' then we can extract lessons from the active learning pedagogy. Like many other evolving complex areas of human activity, there are few given ``canons'' or ``truths'' of development knowledge that can be taught to (or learned by) the developing countries. Most development practice is based on experiences, hypotheses and experiments the outcome of which is usually uncertain and the replicability of which is far from assured. There is thus little room for a straightforward dissemination model in which experts and trainers from the
development agencies teach or disseminate these truths to the leaders, policy makers, and trainers of the developing world who in turn propagate and implement the truths. Yet the active learning pedagogy argues that even this standard dissemination methodology is in any event simply wrong. Even if we had such truths, which we don't (see below), the active learning methodology would suggest a more indirect route where the development agency would arrange, promote, enable, and catalyze learning experiences on the part of the developmental clients so that the latter would actively reappropriate the knowledge. John Dewey's description of the active learning methodology needs to be transposed into a development context where the ``pupil'' is the client country, organization, or group.
The essentials of the method are . . . first that the pupil have a genuine situation of experience that there be a continuous activity in which he is interested for its own sake; second, that a genuine problem develop within this situation as a stimulus to thought; third, that he possess the information and make the observations needed to deal with it; fourth, that suggested solutions occur to him which he shall be responsible for developing in an orderly way; fifth, that he have opportunity and occasion to test his ideas by application, to make their meaning clear and to discover for himself their validity (Dewey 1916, p. 163).
A wide variety of educational thinkers have expressed these insights in their own words. . Ortega y Gasset suggested: ``He who wants to teach a truth should place us in the position to discover it ourselves'' (Ortega y Gasset, 1961, p. 67). . George Bernard Shaw quipped: `ìf you teach a man anything he will never learn it'' (Shaw, 1961, p. 174). . In discussing the relationship of a staffperson A (e.g. human resource staff) helping a manager B solve a problem, Douglas McGregor argued that `À's objective is to utilize his skill to create a situation in which B can learn, and to make his knowledge available so that B may utilize it to augment his own need satisfaction in ways consistent with the achievement of organizational objectives'' (McGregor, 1966, p. 163). ``Fundamentally the staff man . . . must create a situation in which members of management can learn, rather than one in which they are taught'' (McGregor, 1996, p. 161).
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Mary Parker Follett's ``law of the situation'' carried the active learning pedagogy over from how not to teach lessons to how not to issue orders: "Our job is not how to get people to obey orders, but how to devise methods by which we can best discover the order integral to a particular situation'' (Follett, 1992 (1926), p. 70). And Kierkegaard applied the active learning methodology to the most painful form of learning: ``For my own Error is something I can discover only by myself, since it is only when I discover it that it is discovered, even if the whole world knew of it before'' (Bretall, 1946, p. 158).
In animals capable of ontogenetic learning, the genes do not transmit only the specific behaviors that might be fitted to certain environments; the genes also transmit learning mechanisms to the offspring. The animal then interacts with, adapts to, and learns from the environment. In this manner, the animal can learn much more complex activities in a wide variety of environments than could possibly be transmitted directly by the genes.
[The learning mechanism's] peculiarity is that the gene-pattern delegates part of its control over the organism to the environment. Thus, it does not specify in detail how a kitten shall catch a mouse, but provides a learning mechanism and a tendency to play, so that it is the mouse which teaches the kitten the finer points of how to catch mice. This is regulation, or adaptation, by the indirect method. The gene-pattern does not, as it were, dictate, but puts the kitten into the way of being able to form its own adaptation, guided in detail by the environment (Ashby, 1960, p. 234).
Getting the bugs out of knowledge-based development aid

There is a particularly amusing and memorable way to conceptualize the application of the active learning methodology in development, namely the `ìnsect theory'' that contrasts the biological learning mechanisms in insects and in people. For many organisms, insects being a good example, the specific behaviors (that are fitted to certain stable environments) are transmitted by the genes from parents to offspring. The individual organism does not engage in learning from the environment as the appropriate behaviors are already determined or ``hard-wired'' by the structure of the organism that was transmitted through the genes. Thus any learning takes place only at the species level, not at the individual insect level. Norbert Wiener called this ``phylogenetic learning'' as opposed to `òntogenetic learning'' (Wiener, 1961, p. 169). For instance, insects essentially have only phylogenetic learning whereas the mammals (``higher animals'') have both phylogenetic learning and ontogenetic learning.
[The] very physical development of the insect conditions it to be an essentially stupid and unlearning individual, cast in a mold which cannot be modified to any great extent. . .. On the other hand, . . . the human individual [is] capable of vast learning and study, . . . [and] is physically equipped, as the ant is not, for this capacity. Variety and possibility are inherent in the human sensorium . . . and are indeed the key to man's most noble flights . . . because variety and possibility belong to the very structure of the human organism (Wiener, 1954, pp. 51-2).
The direct method (where genes transmit behaviors) and the indirect method (where the genes transmit a learning capacity) are essentially the genetic versions of two basic pedagogies of passive or active learning. In the direct method, the teacher transmits knowledge to the passive student who absorbs and uses the knowledge as needed. In the indirect method, the teacher fosters and awakens an intrinsic desire for learning on the part of the learner who then takes the active role in (re)discovering and appropriating knowledge. The teacher does not transmit knowledge, but transmits or arranges the learning experience that ``puts the [learner] into the way of being able to form [the learner's] own adaptation, guided in detail by the environment.'' These two methods are also described in the old Chinese story that giving a man a fish only feeds him for a day while teaching him how to fish feeds him for a lifetime. Ashby develops a similar story. Suppose that a father only had ten minutes to teach his child the meanings of English words. Using the direct method, the father would teach the child the meaning of a small number of words.
The indirect method is for the father to spend the ten minutes showing the child how to use a dictionary. At the end of the ten minutes the child is, in one sense, not better off; for not a single word has been added to his vocabulary. Nevertheless the second method has a fundamental advantage; for in the future the
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number of words that the child can understand is no longer bounded by the limit imposed by the ten minutes. The reason is that if the information about meanings has to come through the father directly, it is limited to ten-minutes' worth; in the indirect method the information comes partly through the father and partly through another channel (the dictionary) that the father's ten-minute act has made available (Ashby, 1960, p. 236).
to local conditions. An agency's penchant to transmit catechisms does not help this learning process; in fact it hurts the process of autonomous learning on the part of the clients by promoting, implicitly if not explicitly, tutelage and belief based only on authority.
The activities of knowledge-based development assistance can be conceptualized using either of the two methods of training. The direct method corresponds to the standard default conception of the World Bank as the storehouse of knowledge that is transmitted or disseminated to the passive clients who learn this knowledge and thus adopt the right behaviors. The ``genes'' that transmit these behaviors are the core courses or standard modules used to train clients. The role for such a model is in any event limited since there is very little reliable and widely replicable development truths to be stored or disseminated. Development is more a process of exploration and experimentation in which more promising approaches are gradually identified and encouraged, while less promising practices are discerned and discouraged. On the indirect method, the main knowledge-based function of the World Bank is capacity-building in the clients (like the genes transmitting a learning mechanism) so that the clients can carry out their own learning processes in their environment. But what about all the learnings from theory and practice in the past? To paraphrase Ortega, the development agency that ``wants to teach a truth should place [the clients] in the position to discover it [them]selves.'' In that manner, the client is in the ``driver's seat'' in the learning process and will own the knowledge thus acquired knowledge that moreover would then be adapted to the client's local culture and environment. In other words, even if the development agency has the right knowledge, it is the wrong pedagogy to try to ``transmit'' it to the clients. The agency needs to play more the role of the Socratic guide and midwife to strengthen the powers of critical thought and independent inquiry in the clients and to promote the clients' own self-directed learning program so the clients will discover appropriate knowledge themselves. Then the knowledge is locally owned as well as adapted
``Knowledge for development''

The ``knowledge for development'' disseminated from the North often is essentially a generic description of the existing institutions in the developed world (or often, more specifically, the Anglo-American world). Even assuming that is the goal, a description of the goal is far from a roadmap of ``how to get from here to there''. When one delves into the history of the developed industrialized countries, then one finds rather unique path-dependent evolution that is not readily transferable as a blueprint or guidebook for socially engineering development in the Third World. Often the more relevant practices are from the parts of the developing world that have recently made progress (e.g. the East Asian countries). The case studies of developing country success stories written by First-World-trained experts tend to only ``see'' the lessons compatible with the received First World wisdom (e.g. the continuing controversy about the role of the developmental state in the East Asian tigers)[2]. The capacity to move vast amounts of information rapidly around the planet through new information technology such as e-mail and the World Wide Web has enabled many organizations to share knowledge among employees, customers and stakeholders to an extent that was unimaginable only a few years ago. This phenomenon has highlighted how little reliable knowledge we have that is independent of the context in which it emerged. The explosion of interest in knowledge sharing has been accompanied by the growing realization that abstract knowledge, without its context explained in narrative language, can be both unreliable and even dangerous. As a result, storytelling has emerged as a central phenomenon in knowledge management[3]. Understanding the context is even more important when dealing with knowledge for development. It is more tempting and
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convenient to abstract problems and standardize solutions by external development agencies who must otherwise engage with other active learners to deal with the poorly understood, highly diverse and distant realities of developing countries and communities. Linking codified knowledge and abstract models to context is critical to all the complex mechanisms that govern development processes. For example, the relationships between growth and poverty reduction are neither clear or deterministic, as they are contingent on country context and initial conditions such as asset distribution, institutional quality, and social capital. Even within the same country, these relationships vary over time, and are mediated by many intangible factors. Even assuming that some limited amount of existing practices can be rendered into generic ``development knowledge'', the knowledge ``disseminated'' to or ``downloaded'' by developing countries is codified knowledge, i.e. merely the tip of a larger knowledge `ìceberg'' of which tacit practices and understanding is by far the larger part. Often the knowledge that is key for implementation is tacit know-how held by the people who originally developed the best practices. In this case, the path of knowledge transfer is as much South-to-South or South to North as it is North-to-South, and the means of transfer are horizontal peer-to-peer methods such as apprenticeship, secondments, imitation, twinning relations, dialogues, practitioner conferences and communities, and guided learning-by-doing.
The opportunity for learning is primarily in discovered systems at the periphery, not in the nexus of official policies at the center. Central's role is to detect significant shifts at the periphery, to pay explicit attention to the emergence of ideas in good currency, and to derive themes of policy by induction. The movement of learning is as much from periphery to periphery, or periphery to center, as from center to periphery. Central comes to function as facilitator of society's learning, rather than as society's trainer (Scho n, 1971, pp. 177-8).
those who need investment capital to those who have it. In a similar manner, a ``knowledge banker'' could function as a source or as a broker of development knowledge. Our arguments push in the direction of a knowledge-based organization that functions more as a broker or development mentor who scans globally for best practices and then connects locally the people undertaking a project with those who have the relevant know-how from similar projects. Such a role is becoming well recognized and described in the function of venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Codified knowledge is not to be neglected or ignored. The ICT revolution in general and the Internet in particular have created a world-wide `Àlexandra Library'' where codified information has become more like a free good, and where large geographically dispersed communities can share expertise seamlessly around the world. Indeed, the super-abundance of information has made discrimination and attention into scarce limiting factors. The knowledge banker needs to function as a discriminating broker directing clients to the most relevant codified knowledge and the most pertinent best practice examples. And there needs to be a recognition that an understanding of the context in which an experience occurred is often crucial to determining its replicability in other circumstances. The communication of the context of knowledge requires narrative modes of communication to supplement abstract forms of thought. Narrative has the additional advantage of being inherently more collaborative and participative than abstract and analytic thinking, with the capacity to communicate tacit knowledge, and is hence very suitable for learning in peer-to-peer dialogues[4].
The `òwnership'' of developmental projects

We have now presented three brief arguments, each of which confirms the locus of activity from the development agency to the client country or developmental group. The active learning pedagogy applied to development as social learning writ large implied that the development agency alone should not have the active role. The client
These considerations take us far from the idea of a central repository of ``development knowledge'' that can be ``taught'' or ``disseminated'' to the developing countries by the development assistance agencies. An investment banker might function in two quite different ways; as a source of investment capital to clients or as a broker connecting
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should also take the active role in learning with the agency having a more indirect enabling and catalyzing role. Second we saw that the partly tacit and practical nature of ``development knowledge'' also militated against a top-down North-to-South model of ``dissemination'' and in favor of a horizontal peer-to-peer model of knowledge transfer with the development agency more in the role of a discerning and enabling broker. Third, we stressed the need for narrative communication to articulate context and tacit understanding of abstract knowledge. The three lines of argument converge on the idea of the development client (e.g. the country) being `ìn the driver's seat''. People have a natural `òwnership'' over the fruits of their own labor, and thus by being actively `ìn the driver's seat'' during the process of assistance, the country would have an `òwnership'' over any resulting project and such projects will have a much greater chance of success and sustainable developmental impact. The idea of the ``country in the driver's seat'' is the central theme of the World Bank's Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF)[5]. Now that the idea of applying the active learning methodology to development assistance is embodied in the declared intentions of the World Bank and other development agencies, it is advisable to have a clear-eyed view of the impediments in the way of implementing these ideas.
Designing programs for adaptive learning

So far in our discussion a development project, an investment program, or policy reform is assumed to be designed up front. The argument made is to have the client take an active learning role at the design stage to ensure ownership over the resulting project or program. But this argument can be pushed further to ensure that the client would remain an active learner throughout implementation and have the room and learning tools to continuously reshape and improve on the original design. Fast change in the external environment is one reason for taking an adaptive learning approach over the more common blueprint approach to project design. But even client-driven blueprint design assumes knowing all the necessary
information about the context, beneficiary, technology and social dynamics at the design stage, and prior to approval by the World bank and other development agencies. It also assumes that no local learning and tacit knowledge will be mobilized during implementation that would require adaptation of, or major departure from, the agreed-upon project design. It also assumes that ownership can be mustered up front and among all stakeholders at the design stage, and that such ownership and commitment will remain throughout implementation. These assumptions are seldom met in the real world. The blueprint approach thus misses not only on ownership, but also on mobilizing learning and tacit knowledge that are most likely to come from implementation, particularly from programs that are specifically designed to capture social and institutional learning during implementation (see Hanna, 2000). There are a number of promising approaches or characteristics to the design of programs to capture tacit local knowledge, foster learning and knowledge-based transformation. One key factor is to ensure flexibility and adaptability in the design of a development project, so as to mobilize and build on local learning processes. World Bank's evaluation findings confirm that within the framework of flexible program design, the better performing activities consistently departed from their original design, led by dynamic local managers and broad local involvement (see World Bank, 1993). An adaptive learning-based design may start small, with a number of rapidresults initiatives that are designed to enhance learning and hypotheses testing up front and to use early feedback and mobilized tacit knowledge for further design and adaptation of a scaled-up program. Examples of promising instruments that are based on these principles are the Learning and Innovation Loan and Adaptable Program Loans, and Community-Driven Development programs that are being increasingly supported by the World Bank. Early findings suggest that these instruments can help build ownership and partnerships with clients, promote commitments to learning and long-term goals, and empower communities to adapt development programs to their local contexts and local knowledge. But more needs to be learned about these instruments: what are the
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prerequisites for successful adaptable programs, how to scale up pilot programs, how to manage risks, and how to set clear accountabilities. An example of such adaptable program design is Brazil's Water and Sanitation for low-income settlements (known as the PROSANEAR Program)(see Hanna, 2000). Design of the water supply and sanitation systems was demand-based and iterative, shaped during implementation by beneficiary participation, feedback and learning. The program developed partnerships among community residents for the selection and management of these systems. Community mobilization and group decision making were tailored to each community, depending on factors such as levels of social cohesion and organization. In an adaptive learning approach, the program encouraged ongoing evaluation of each community's experience for rapid feedback to the next subproject. An active learning approach does have major implications for program design and management. It requires a significant shift of the resources of development assistance agencies from top-down and up-front program design to implementation assistance and participatory monitoring and evaluation. Top-down approaches and analyses would be combined with bottom-up approaches to empower local initiatives, identify and scale up successes, mobilize and integrate the tacit knowledge of communities, promote stakeholder commitment, and ensure ownership over time. The active learning approach will thus require better appreciation of and integration with local information systems and social learning processes. Participatory monitoring and evaluation and results-oriented management systems would also become critical features of program design and implementation.
Recent research findings on aid effectiveness raised doubts about the efficacy of conditionality in inducing and sustaining policy reforms. Traditionally, conditionality has been commonly practiced as a blueprint design of a package of policy conditions attached to a single loan. This practice is based on passive client learning, and on assumptions that all reforms could be codified, and that the dynamics of implementation can be ignored or fully anticipated and standardized across countries. The imperatives of ownership and active learning suggest the need to rethink and reshape conditionality (Branson and Hanna, 2000). We propose that conditionality be viewed as an evolving process in support of a policy compact among aid countries and fund providers. In such a context, development assistance partners would act as enabling agencies in support of country motivated reforms, leaving significant room for the country to determine the means and timing of policy changes according to political economy considerations and local decision processes. Within such a collaborative framework, conditionality is understood as a credible commitment by all development partners to support broadly defined and mutually agreed reform objectives, where implementation and further design of the specific means would develop over time, based on local learning and political economy. Such an approach would put more emphasis on mutual commitment and mutual learning, and on new-style knowledge-based advisory services. Country economic and sector assessments and analytical services of aid agencies to be re-oriented to promote local policy debate, provide options and competing ideas, to learn with clients, to innovate and experiment with the more progressive and advanced clients, and to build local independent think-tanks for policy analysis.
Policy reforms
Development assistance agencies, particularly the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, often engage in lending to countries on condition that these countries commit to clearly specified measures of policy reform. The coverage of these conditions has expanded over time, going beyond the macroeconomic aspects to include social and institutional reforms and governance issues.
The imperative of organizational ownership

While the implementation of the active learning methodology faces many problems (see Ellerman, 2000), there is one overarching organizational problem that must be squarely faced. Otherwise our discussion would be as na ve as any treatment of applying the active learning pedagogy that did
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not squarely face the organizational tendency of schools to hold teachers responsible for the students' learning. Indeed, educational and developmental organizations face very similar pressures. The educational thinker, Robert McClintock, has masterfully described the way in which ancient self-directed study was slowly displaced by teacher-centered instruction in modern times.
As passionate causes wracked human affairs,. . .people found it hard to maintain restraint, they ceased to be willing merely to help in the self development of their fellows; they discovered themselves burdened, alas, with paternal responsibility for ensuring that their wards would not falter and miss the mark. . .Pressures religious, political, social, economic, humanitarian pressures began to mount upon the schools, and it soon became a mere matter of time before schools would be held accountable for the people they produced (McClintock, 1982, p. 60; quoted in Candy, 1991, p. 32).
backward vertical integration of firms in the private sector. The organization expands ``backward'' into the task environment and starts to ``manufacture'' project applications itself. It thereby lessens the high degree of uncertainty of the environment from which it must get its inputs, assuring itself of a more reliable source of supply (Tendler, 1975, p. 103).
A similar history could be given for the whole modern `ìndustry'' of development agencies; the more the agencies take ``responsibility'' for developmental outcomes, the less `òwnership'' on the part of the developing countries. Judith Tendler (1975) develops a particularly powerful version of this thesis that organizational ownership undermines and crowds out client ownership. Without working to generate its own supply of good projects, a development agency would have insufficient ``deal flow'' to justify its own budgets.
The initial position of the Bank was that preparation of a project was the responsibility of the borrower; if the Bank became involved, it could not thereafter be sufficiently objective in appraising the project. Though buttressed by logic, this position soon gave way to the pressure of events. `Èxperience has demonstrated that we do not get enough good projects to appraise unless we are involved intimately in their identification and preparation'' (Mason and Asher, 1973, p. 308; quote from: Baum, 1970, p. 6; quoted in Tendler, 1975, p. 87).
A principal economic rationale for vertical integration, whether it be in the private sector organization like the Ford Motor Company or a large development agency, was that the transaction costs of not integrating were high: vertical integration lowered transaction costs. This rationale is rapidly losing its potency, as the unit costs of computing, communications and transactions approach zero, and new forms of highly effective decentralized organization are becoming possible. The evolution of the Linux operating system by several thousand hackers scattered around the world is one successful example (see Raymond, 1999). The scope of the decentralized model is still not known, but it is widely thought to be very large. The Tendler-McClintock effect shows how the organizational imperative by large centrally driven companies to ``take responsibility'' for the ``product'' crowds out the ownership of the clients and leads to passivity and dependency.
That is, the more that donor organizations are able to impose order on the outside decisionmaking that affects their product, the better they can perform their task. In so doing, however, they bring dependency to those whose decisionmaking has been so ordered. Seen in this light, dependency is the result not necessarily of design but of an organization's attempts to do well (Tendler, 1975, p. 109).
The pressure was generated by the low quality as well as small quantity of projects. The development agency is like a company that receives `ìnputs'' (project proposals) of such a poor quality that the company cannot produce its own ``product'' (funded projects). Hence the company needs to vertically integrate the production of the input into its own operations.
This taking over of project generation by development assistance institutions is like the
The same logic ramifies through every level of educational and developmental organizations. Those who teach or help must ``show results'' in order ``to do well'' so more and more responsibility and ownership is taken over to the detriment of the learners or ``doers of development''. This `òwnership'' problem has been recognized by those who advocated the active learning methodology as far back as Rousseau: ``The master's amour-propre must always leave some hold for the disciple's; he must be able to say to himself, Ì conceive, I discern, I act, I learn'.'' (Rousseau, 1979 (1762), p. 248) We now see both horns of the dilemma: organizational imperatives in development agencies require that they take `òwnership'' of
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projects while successful developmental outcomes require that the clients have ownership of the projects. The future of official development assistance in the twentyfirst century will depend in no small part on squarely facing and satisfactorily resolving that ownership dilemma.
Notes
1 The World Bank's vision of knowledge management has from the outset been a vision of external knowledge sharing: ``We need to invest in the necessary systems, in Washington and worldwide, that will enhance out ability to gather development information and experiences, and share it with our clients. . .'' President Wolfensohn's Annual Meeting Speech, October 1, 1996. 2 Donald Scho n's ``Rashomon effect'', (1971) refers to this problem of drawing lessons from best practices. 3 See for example the IBM Website on storytelling at http://www.research.ibm.com/knowsoc/ and Denning, 2000. 4 See Denning, 2000, especially chapters 4-7. 5 See Wolfensohn, 1997, 1998, 1999; Hanna, 2000. More thought also needs to be given as to whether it is enough to put the client in the driver's seat, and whether a larger role for the client in terms of choosing whether to have the car in the first place and then also having a say in designing and engineering the car may also be needed for full empowerment.
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Active learning and development assistance

David Ellerman Stephen Denning and Nagy Hanna

Passive and active learning