Partnerships Face Research Articles

Examining boundaries in a large-scale educational research-practice partnership

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) are emerging as a promising approach for educational change by closing the gap between educational research and practice. However, these partnerships face several challenges, such as addressing cultural differences as well as relationship-building in a historically unbalanced relationship between researchers and practitioners. Scholars have argued that these cultural differences, also called boundaries, have learning potential if approached constructively, but that we need to know more about what characterizes them in an educational context. The aim of this study is to contribute to our understanding of frameworks for RPPs. By analysing 45 hours of video recordings from meetings in an RPP between four researchers and 300 practitioners, the study offers a characterization of seven different boundaries organized into three different boundary themes: a) prerequisites for collaboration, b) collaborative practices, and c) collaborative content. Moreover, the different boundaries affect the positioning of different actors in the RPP. For example, depending on the boundary expressed, teachers are positioned as either flawed implementers or co-inquirers. We argue that the boundaries and different participant positions within the RPPs they reinforce may affect their learning potentials.

Employers in Business Partnerships Face Increased Organizing Risks

Effective December 26, 2023, employers who are involved in business partnerships have reason for heightened concern about becoming unionized. Businesses that should be most concerned are those with subcontracting or franchising relationships. Under a recently published rule of the NLRB, a broadened joint employer rule can expose them to union election petitions. NLRB Final Rule—Standard for Determination Joint Employer Status, RIN 3142‐AA2.

Mobilizing and Activating Haíɫzaqvḷa (Heiltsuk Language) and Culture Through a Community-University Partnership

The sharing of existing linguistic resources through online platforms has become an increasingly important aspect in revitalization projects for Indigenous languages. This contribution addresses the urgency of such work through the lens of a partnership in support of one language, Haíɫzaqvḷa (Heiltsuk), a critically endangered Wakashan language spoken in and around the traditional Heiltsuk territory of Bella Bella, British Columbia. Alongside immediate community needs for language preservation and reclamation—informed and guided by Heiltsuk values and goals—lie important ethical and practical questions about how best to activate historic recordings of Elders and knowledge holders who have now passed. Our partnership was explicitly structured around the objective of helping to mobilize the large body of existing languagedocumentation and revitalization materials created in and by the community to support broader community access through digital technologies. Working within the fast-changing digital environment requires agility in order to respond to time-sensitive goals and the strategic needs of the community. Ensuring that such work is grounded in respectful collaboration requires ongoing care, consultation and consideration. The digital landscape is still a new and exciting space, and the opportunities to use online tools and technologies in service of language revitalization are ever increasing. We believe that the strategies, approaches and modest successes of the Heiltsuk Language and Culture Mobilization Partnership may be informative for other community-based language reclamation projects. We hope that outlining ourexperiences and being transparent about the challenges such partnerships face may help others engaged in this urgent and timely work.

The conundrum research-practice partnerships face with system variability

Variability is inherent in educational phenomena. Research-practice approaches face a conundrum of how to deal with variability. It can be positive, providing evidence for effective innovation in local sites, but interferes with a goal of consistent effectiveness. Our methods for capitalizing on variation have become sophisticated, and solutions to the unwanted facets of variability are emerging. A working model for how to think about variability and setting expectations about the tolerance levels is proposed.

Making Smallholder Value Chain Partnerships Inclusive: Exploring Digital Farm Monitoring through Farmer Friendly Smartphone Platforms

Value chain partnerships face difficulties achieving inclusive relations, often leading to unsustainable collaboration. Improving information flow between actors has been argued to contribute positively to a sense of inclusion in such partnership arrangements. Smallholders however usually lack the capability to use advanced communication technologies such as smartphones which offer a means for elaborate forms of information exchange. This study explores to what extent co-designing smartphone platforms with smallholders for farm monitoring contributes to smallholder ability to communicate, and how this influences smallholder sense of inclusion. The study uses an Action Design Research approach in engaging smallholders in Ghana, through multi-stakeholder and focus group discussions, in a reflexive co-design process. The research finds that co-designing a platform interface was significant in improving farmer ability to comprehend and use smartphone based platforms for communicating farm conditions and their needs with value chain partners. Farmers were however skeptical of making demands based on the platform due to their lack of power and mistrust of other actors. This highlights a need for adjusting the social and political dimensions of partnership interactions, in tandem with the advancement of digital tools, in order to effectively facilitate a sense of inclusiveness in partnerships.

Discovering Together

Background/Context School–university partnerships, research–practice partnerships, and professional development schools represent three separate framings for the type of work outlined in this case study. These types of partnerships face various challenges as outlined in the literature, for the partnership as a collective and the partners at an institutional level. This case study contributes to this literature and provides potential policy implications through both the successes and challenges that are included. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The research focused on a partnership that received funding through a grant provided by the state legislature. This study explored the partnership between a local, public K–6 elementary and two private institutions of higher education, their teacher preparation programs specifically. The research focused on ways in which the partnerships improved both student achievement and teacher candidate preparation while also improving the overall school culture. Research Design This research design is a mixed-methods case study and analyzes the partnership and the influences that resulted at the school and the institutions of higher education. This discussion draws on anecdotal, qualitative, and quantitative data and observations to reflect on the impact of the work of the partnership. Data Collection and Analysis The resulting profile uses several sources of data: interviews and surveys (current and past participants), documents (meeting note summaries, planning documents, etc.), performance data (academic, attendance, and behavior), and participation data (i.e., teacher candidates placed at schools, extended learning opportunity participation, etc.). Conclusions/Recommendations The partnership outlined in this article benefited where the personnel were consistent throughout the life span of the project. Challenges were more acute when there were changes to personnel assigned to the partnership. In addition, having additional student supports, either in classrooms during the school day (i.e., math and literacy instructional time) or in the extended learning program after school, met the dual purpose of positively impacting student development (academic and social/emotional) and providing authentic learning experiences for preservice teacher candidates. This is a promising organizing framework on which to build these types of partnerships.

Data driven social partnerships: Exploring an emergent trend in search of research challenges and questions

The volume of data collected by multiple devices, such as mobile phones, sensors, satellites, is growing at an exponential rate. Accessing and aggregating different sources of data, including data outside the public domain, has the potential to provide insights for many societal challenges. This catalyzes new forms of partnerships between public, private, and nongovernmental actors aimed at leveraging different sources of data for positive societal impact and the public good. In practice there are different terms in use to label these partnerships but research has been lagging behind in systematically examining this trend. In this paper, we deconstruct the conceptualization and examine the characteristics of this emerging phenomenon by systematically reviewing academic and practitioner literature. To do so, we use the grounded theory literature review method. We identify several concepts which are used to describe this phenomenon and propose an integrative definition of “data driven social partnerships” based on them. We also identify a list of challenges which data driven social partnerships face and explore the most urgent and most cited ones, thereby proposing a research agenda. Finally, we discuss the main contributions of this emerging research field, in relation to the challenges, and systematize the knowledge base about this phenomenon for the research community.

De dynamiek van slimme sturing voor de verduurzaming van handelsketens

Traditional state-centered governance systems have failed to effectively tackle the transnational problem of the sustainability of global value chains (GVCs). To fill this ‘institutional void’, industry and NGOs established a series of global partnerships that designed standards and certification schemes for global commodities. This paper uses different theoretical lenses to address the question as to what extent these arrangements can be evaluated as smart, and for what and for whom they are smart? Despite their relative success, these partnerships face some serious challenges. Consequently, smart governance also requires adaptiveness and the prevention of path dependencies.

Participatory Democracy, Community Organizing and the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) Partnership.

Background: Conflicting interests, power imbalance and relationships characterized by distrust are just a few of the many challenges community–academic research partnerships face. In addition, the time it takes to build relationships is often overlooked, which further complicates matters and can leave well-intentioned individuals re-creating oppressive conditions through inauthentic partnerships. This paper presents a novel approach of using meeting minutes to explore partnership dynamics. The Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) partnership is used as an illustrative case study to identify how community academic partnerships overcome the challenges associated with community-based participatory research (CBPR). CAFEH is a study of ultrafine particle exposure (UFP) near highways in the Boston, MA area. Methods: Qualitative analysis was applied to meeting minutes and process evaluation reports from the first three years of the CAFEH study (n = 73 files). In addition, a group meeting was held with project partners in order to contextualize the findings from the document analysis. Results: The three most commonly referenced challenges included language barriers, the overall project structure and budgetary constraints. Meanwhile, a heavy emphasis on process and an approach steeped in participatory democracy facilitated CAFEH’s ability to overcome these challenges, as well as sustain and augment strong partnership ties. Conclusions: This experience suggests that leadership that incorporates an organizing approach and a transformational style facilitates CBPR processes and helps teams surmount challenges.

Outlook for state-designated health information exchange: Learning from the information systems and economics literatures

Some states used Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act funds to create Public-Private Partnerships to deliver health information exchange services to end users. As these entities work to identify sustainable business models within increasingly competitive markets, the states and partnerships face three issues. First, while the partnership structure offers potential advantages and disadvantages for exchanges facing competition, they must position themselves strategically to enjoy the potential benefits. Second, the choice of technical architecture has important implications for the partnership’s market niche; thus, exchanges should view the selection as a business, rather than a technical, decision. Third, states face potential conflicts of interest as they participate on partnership governing boards, purchase exchange services, and regulate providers of exchange services. These potential conflicts require careful consideration of funding for last-resort services, pricing for services purchased to support state programs, and separation of the regulatory function from business functions.

Academic-Practice Partnerships for Unemployed New Graduates in California.

In California, academic-practice partnerships offer innovative transition programs to new registered nurse (RN) graduates who have not yet found positions in nursing. This report describes the formation of 4 partnerships between 1 or more schools of nursing and clinical practice sites that included hospitals and nonacute care settings, such as hospice, clinics, school districts, and skilled nursing facilities. Factors facilitating the partnerships included relationships established as nurse leaders from practice and academia came together to address previous workforce issues, positive interpersonal experiences, an independent convening and coordinating organization, a shared understanding of the employment challenge faced by new RN graduates, and a shared vision for its solution. Partnerships face continuing challenges that include sustaining engagement, resource constraints, and insufficient nursing leadership succession planning. Partnership benefits include improved relationships between academia and practice, a forum to address contemporary issues in nursing education and practice advances, and stimulation of a reassessment of how to integrate ambulatory, transitional, and community-based nursing into prelicensure education.

The challenges of scaling-up and sustaining professional development school partnerships

This article addresses the challenges PDS partnerships face as they go to scale. Based on Coburn's (2005) notions of scale, the article uses organizational theory to analyze data from a ten-year qualitative meta-synthesis of PDS partnership research. Based upon the analysis, the article offers four recommendations: PDS partnerships should sustain strong trajectories of research regarding their work; Stakeholders in PDS partnerships need to ensure that faculty and staff have adequate support to thrive; PDS partnerships need to be based upon enabling bureaucratic structures; and PDS partners need to create opportunities to engage with each other in positive, normative spaces.

Political rescaling and metropolitan governance in cross-border regions: comparing the cross-border metropolitan areas of Lille and Luxembourg

In the last 20 years, the number of cross-border cooperation structures in Europe has exploded owing to political and financial support by the European Union aimed at encouraging cohesion and developing peripheral regions. These policies are part of processes of de-bordering and political rescaling that have profoundly affected cross-border areas by creating new institutional territories and political structures. The purpose of this paper is to study the institutional history of cross-border metropolitan governance in Europe through the comparison of two of the most advanced cross-border metropolitan regions: Lille and Luxembourg. This paper asks how these cross-border structures have developed and changed. What can their patterns of institutional evolution contribute to understanding governance in other cross-border regions? Are these new spaces evidence of political rescaling? This paper presents and redefines cross-border governance as a cyclical and a long-term process and also explores the challenges that these partnerships face in becoming functionally effective and autonomous policy actors. Ultimately, we find that there is no replicable ideal of cross-border governance and that even long-standing partnerships are in a period of exploration and reinvention. Establishing a competitive and coherent cross-border metropolitan region is ambitious and complex, and it necessitates the coordination of policies at multiple scales and across institutionally diverse territories. This project requires the modification and/or construction of new institutional and legal frameworks. This reorientation of political attention has resulted in a reconceptualization of political space but not the empowerment of new political actors, indicating that the process of rescaling may be a work in progress.

The role of religion in linking conservation and development

The world’s religions have made a contribution to environmental conservation and sustainable development through faith-based non-governmental organizations. Partnerships between secular conservation and development organizations and faith-based groups, however, are not always easy. Such partnerships face various challenges, including differences in worldviews, conict between identities, and the attitudes and behavior of religious groups that may not be favorable to conservation and development. Despite a possible overlap of values, these incompatibilities can often cause tensions between secular organizations and religious groups. A number of examples, however, suggest that faith-based groups are starting to address these incompatibilities. We suggest that partnerships with faith groups might be valuable because these groups can enhance public support for conservation and development. While secular organizations need to work with faith groups on the basis of shared ethical or moral values, identifying effective ways to strengthen the linkages between secular organizations and faith groups is also necessary.

Facilitating North–South Partnerships for Sustainable Agriculture

The increased number of development cooperation and sustainable agriculture partnerships brings with it new challenges for professionals who are asked to facilitate these partnering processes. In this article we shed more light on the world of development cooperation and we explore questions that facilitators working with North–South partnerships face. The main research questions are: What are the distinguishing characteristics of North–South partnership dynamics; what insights and lessons can we draw from the management of these partnerships, and what recommendations or advice can we offer to those facilitating such partnerships? On the basis of a deductive research process we reveal a number of characteristics that mark the process of building partnerships within the context of development cooperation. Through two cases of sustainable agriculture partnerships—biological cotton and responsible soy—we discuss how professionals confront these specific characteristics and how they address these. The material from the two cases was made more complete by drawing on other experiences and relevant literature. The revealed characteristics creating challenges for professionals facilitating partnerships are the following: ideology and values; politically loaded relationships; unilateral financial dependence; cultural and physical distance; and fragile social trust. We end with some essential operational guidelines for professionals managing or advising partnerships. As partnerships in development cooperation are becoming ever more important, there is a need for more professionalization. However, few studies have paid attention to the challenges professionals face and the way they can deal with them.

Facilitators, Challenges, and Collaborative Activities in Faith and Health Partnerships to Address Health Disparities

Interest in partnering with faith-based organizations (FBOs) to address health disparities has grown in recent years. Yet relatively little is known about these types of partnerships. As part of an evaluation of the Institute for Faith and Public Health Collaborations, representatives of 34 faith-health teams (n = 61) completed semi-structured interviews. Interviews were tape recorded, transcribed, and coded by two members of the evaluation team to identify themes. Major facilitators to faith-health collaborative work were passion and commitment, importance of FBOs in communities, favorable political climate, support from community and faith leaders, diversity of teams, and mutual trust and respect. Barriers unique to faith and health collaboration included discomfort with FBOs, distrust of either health agencies or FBOs, diversity within faith communities, different agendas, separation of church and state, and the lack of a common language. Findings suggest that faith-health partnerships face unique challenges but are capable of aligning resources to address health disparities.

Community-University Partnerships: Achieving the Promise in the Face of Changing Goals, Changing Funding Patterns, and Competing Priorities

An important challenge that community-university partnerships face is how to maintain themselves in the face of changing goals, priorities, and funding. Partnerships often form as a result of some sort of "spark:" an incident, perhaps, or the identification of a shared need or common concern. Often, external funding is sought to provide the majority of resources for the establishment of a partnership and for the implementation of the partnership's action plan. Whatever external funding is obtained is typically of short duration. The funding will not continue over time. And usually the funding comes with stipulations about allowable partnership approaches; inevitably the priorities of one funder will differ from those of another. These issues of the maintenance of partnership in the face of shifting funding and priorities are ones that confront most community-university partnerships. This article examines these issues through the lens of an environmental justice partnership that has existed for nearly a decade, has undergone many changes in who is involved, and has operated with funding from many different sources, including the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency. In addition, the entities in the partnerships, while they share certain environmental objectives, are sometimes at odds on particular goals when the needs of the agencies differ. Further complicating this issue of continuity is the reality that partners, on occasion, must shift priorities after partnership goals are established. The experiences of this environmental justice partnership shed light on the kinds of struggles community-university partnerships face when they hope to avoid being undermined by the larger concerns of the funders or by the power brokers in their individual organizations. This article examines approaches that community-university partnerships might take to remain resilient in the face of changing goals, priorities and funding.

Guidelines for Writing Manuscripts About Community-Based Participatory Research for Peer-Reviewed Journals

Despite the importance of disseminating the results of community-based participatory research (CBPR), community health partnerships face many challenges in getting their work published. The purpose of this article is to present practical guides for writing about CBPR for those who have little experience in writing for publication or those who want to help their partners write strong manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals. The article includes tips on how to organize each part of a manuscript, suggestions on how partners can collaborate on preparing manuscripts, recommendations on how to convey unique aspects of a partnership's work throughout a manuscript, and an annotated bibliography of well-written CBPR articles. By understanding how to prepare a manuscript about CBPR for a peer-reviewed journal, authors should be more effective in disseminating information that will help other communities to benefit from their partnership's work.

Learning Partnerships

The Problem and the Solution. Those who work in partnerships face spe cial challenges. This chapter examines partnerships between paramedics to explore the different kinds of partnerships that exist in the working world because either the work itself or the relationship itself is routine or nonroutine Additive, potentiated, and synergistic partnerships have implications for staffing and learning in an organization