Capacity Building and Evaluation (CABE) generates knowledge from a common field of interest under the title: Capacity Building. The term is defined as any action and reflection that contributes to change and improve individuals, organizations, or systems opportunity to reach own goals and create own conditions for development. Capacity Building is about organizational learning, creativity, innovation, co-production and co-creation, evaluation, and relational capacity.

CABE is a group characterized by diversity, where every member contributes with valuable perspectives on research, which creates the possibility of working with scientific problems from multiple angles. Knowledge in the group is intertwined, not only across individuals in the group, but also regarding the research that is conducted, and the educations that are handled by the group.

CABE has a playful, aesthetic, democratic and co-operational approach, where knowledge is created with and for certain individuals, groups, or organizations. CABE continuously works with exploring new ways and make creative choices to develop both methods and tools, that contributes to capacity building in organizations and to achieve the research-based goals of the group. CABE contributes to AAU’s adjustment to mission-driven research, with cooperation with organizations and groups to solve bigger societal issues. CABE’s approach to research contributes to different methods and involvement of different user groups and organizations in the research. CABE develops PLB-based knowledge that affects multiple aspects of what is conducted related to research, education, and dissemination of knowledge, both nationally and internationally.

Regarding the strategic frame, the goal for CABE is to produce knowledge of the highest quality about capacity building and evaluation. This is done by contributing with research and publications of high academic standards in both national and international journals. Besides a large academic production, CABE contributes to societal value generation and organizational development in both public and private organizations, as well as NGOs through capacity building, evaluation, and education of high quality.

The members of the research group are associated with master-, bachelor-, and graduate programs, with tasks related to teaching, guidance, and coordination. The members of the group have special obligations to the formal part time master’s degrees KREA and MPL, as well as the bachelor's degree in Organizational Learning. The master’s degrees are an important factor regarding the groups strategic goal of societal impact. The students of these educations are both the first to hear about the research within the group, and a bridge to applicate the findings in organizations. The educational programs attract professionals from the fields, where CABE conducts research, meaning that students also contribute to the research and cases used in the group.

• Bachelor’s degree in organizational Learning
• Master’s degree in Learning and Processes of Change
• Formal part time master’s in Learning Processes
• Formal part time master’s in public Capacity Building and Co-creation
• Formal part time master’s in Innovation and Creative Design of Learning

CABE works within multiple theoretical and empirical fields of research. Read more about these below:

CABE works with the following theoretical fields: Capacity building, evaluation, co-creation, organizational learning, university/industry cooperation, innovation, creativity, and user involvement.

The theoretical perspectives of the group are for example used in these empirical fields: education (kindergarten, primary school, secondary school and higher education), the social area (eldercare, handicap, social work, and psychiatric care, as well as private organizations and NGOs.

CABE cooperates with public, private, and voluntary organizations in creating research-based knowledge and products of knowledge, that contributes to effective capacity building, evaluation, and organizational development.

The members of the group cooperate with multiple organizations, and across faculties and institutes of the university. The externally funded projects, and the methods used here, are often solution oriented and close to practice and thus contributes with a societal impact. It is an ambition of the group to develop forms of dissemination aimed directly at practice, by publishing in professional journals and other medias close to practice, such as podcasts and video. The vision is that the research-based knowledge and products are available to the students and their development, and to support the strategy of Aalborg University regarding educations of high quality. The activities of the group are shared through CABE’s LinkedIn profile, where current projects, seminars, publications, and more are shared. With the aim of profiling CABE in relation to the surrounding society, the group’s members often present their research for those interested through public “go-home”-meetings or by appointment at specific contexts.

CABE works with external researchers and practitioners to advance and develop knowledge within the field of capacity building and evaluation – in Denmark and internationally. Through participating in conferences, network meetings, transnational projects, publications in international journals etc. CABE works actively with knowledge for the world. The concrete arena of this work is in the following networks and formal cooperation relations:

• Network of knowledge daycare/ministry of children and education
• Network for the use of quantitative data in daycare/VIVE
• Early Childhood Education and Care Network. International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI)
• Early career coordinator network International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI)
• ACEI – Association for Childhood Education International
• DEA the thinktank DEA
• FOCUS – Research center for education in social work
• Centre for Violence Studies

CaBE works with dissemination of knowledge through multiple different methods and aimed at different collaboration partners and actors.

The members of the group attend conferences and seminars in an academic context, where they present the newest knowledge from the groups research fields. The members of the group also actively work with creative ways of disseminating knowledge within the contexts of the research. Examples of this are Pixi-books, video- and audio formats, workshops, and aesthetically, creatively supported processes of knowledge application in organisations.

Members of CABE are permanent members of the editorial boards in the following journals:

• Forskning og Forandring (Research and Change)
• European Early Childhood Education Research Journal
• Journal of Research in Childhood Education
• Pædagogisk Psykologisk Tidsskrift (pedagogical psychological journal)
• PAIDEIA