A Qualitative Meta-Analysis on Infrastructure Strategies for Basic Education and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Korean Official Development Assistance (ODA)

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

As Korea’s educational development cooperation strategies have diversified, Official Development Assistance (ODA) for education has expanded both quantitatively and strategically. Despite the significant changes over recent decades, strategic and academic discussions on educational infrastructure interventions, which constitute a significant share of current educational ODA budgets and activities, remain limited. This study employed thematic synthesis as a qualitative meta-synthesis methodology to examine 34 post-completion evaluation reports from Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and Basic Education, the two primary areas of intervention in Korea’s educational ODA. The analysis identified 11 initial themes, which were synthesized into five higher-order categories: comprehensive and thorough needs assessment, strengthening causal linkages within the logical framework, user-friendly design and construction, risk management, and sustainability. Key implications emerged on comparing strategic considerations between TVET and Basic Education. The findings underscore the importance of strengthening alignment between educational infrastructure and content, managing unintended educational impacts caused by construction delays, incorporating local and educational specificities into planning and construction phases, pre-planning maintenance activities and budgeting throughout the program and project cycle, and addressing other critical factors.