Partnerships in education: collaboration, co-operation and co-optation

From 13th to 15th September, the British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE) Conference will take place exploring the theme of partnerships in education.

The Schools2030 movement is only possible through our partnerships with stakeholders right across the education eco-system. Our global coalition is made up of teachers and school communities, national and global technical partners, local and national government, civil society organisations and donors. Driven by an ethos of co-creation and collaboration, we invite these stakeholders to co-build evidence on low-cost, scalable, contextually relevant solutions to improving holistic learning outcomes for marginalised communities worldwide. Our experience of placing participatory processes at the heart of our programming and research partnerships uniquely positions Schools2030 and our partners to reflect on the challenges, successes and opportunities afforded by working as part of a rich network of education partners.

On 15th September, our session will offer a range of perspectives from across Schools2030 research partners and their projects, including from:

• Nazarbayev University who are leading research together with OISE, University of Toronto that explores context-relevant definitions of quality education by understanding the perspectives of teachers, students, school leaders, and parents in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and how ideas of quality are manifesting in the classroom. We will hear how this research explores stories of how education practices are perceived, experienced, shaped and mediated by people on the ground.
• UNICEF Innocenti’s Data Must Speak (DMS) research which uses a mixed-methods and “positive deviance” approach to identify local practices and behaviours that are successful in making some schools outperform others, even though they operate in similar contexts. We will hear about how the projects’ co-creation and co-implementation process operates within a systems approach to improving education that makes use of large administrative datasets.
•  ITA Pakistan & Zizi Afrique, who are investigating the relationship between academic learning outcomes and non-academic skills in Schools2030 schools in Pakistan and Kenya. We will hear perspectives from this project on linkages between academic and non-academic skills, and reflections on what this means for what is valued and measured in education.
• Right to Play who are working as part of a unique research-practice partnership together with the Universities of Notre Dame and Dar es Salaam to understand the effectiveness of key elements of the Design Thinking Approach and Play-based Learning and how they impact children’s social, emotional, and academic skills. We will hear reflections on what is valued and measured in education by stakeholders including children, parents and teachers, and the localised manifestation of learner-centred designs in a resource-constrained setting.

More information on the BAICE conference can be found here