Local partnerships as ‘rationalized myths’: a critical examination of the micro-discourse in educational partnership working

Abstract

This paper explores the micro-discursive dimension of local partnership working to generate new insights into the dynamics that explain why partnerships so often fail to achieve their ambitions. It sheds light on to the micro-politics of cocreating the situated partnership narrative, critically placing it in the wider systemic context by understanding local partnerships as ‘rationalized myths’. In doing so, it draws on data from a longitudinal ethnographic case study of a German education partnership on the neighborhood level. The analysis revealed that the local partnership myth created a dual reality for the involved actors: on the one hand it legitimized the partnership’s setup, yet concealed its complex, contradictory and antagonistic reality, and on the other hand it offered the discursive resources for dealing with this reality. A partnership narrative was hegemonically established that exposed the neoliberal ideology behind local partnerships and legitimized a strategy that consolidated the partnership’s structural status quo rather than leading to innovation.