Issue/question: In Switzerland, the Educational Landscapes Switzerland program, a multi-year initiative supported by the Jacobs Foundation, aims to encourage the collaboration of formal and non-formal agents to enhance the education opportunities and the access to educational offers for all children/adolescents. It is comprised of 22 projects that try to systematically link formal and non-formal education, following a grassroots approach to become collaborative education networks. The aim of the five-year study (2013-2018) is to ascertain how these networks function and evolve as well as to assess their possible impact on the educational contexts they are located in. The following questions serve to guiding the overall research: 1. Which conditions lead to a higher functional quality of cooperation between educational groups? 2. How do the educational offers change? 3. How are the educational offers used by children and adolescents? 4. Which effects on children and adolescents can be attributed to the use of the educational offers? Key ideas/approach: The theoretical framework employs Fend’s and Helmke's opportunity-use model (Zierer & Seel, 2012). It was expanded to account for learning and teaching beyond the classroom and the context of formal and non-formal educational settings. The opportunity-use model maps several of these factors such as teachers and instructors, learning potential of children and young adults, but also family- and culture-related context factors. The study followed a mixed-methods design including a literature review, document analyses, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. This paper focuses on the qualitative data, with interviews analyzed using an inductive approach, followed by deductive analysis based on categories derived from the theoretical model. Main findings: Intermediate findings show that exchanges and awareness between agents and institutions have intensified over time. A change in culture slowly takes place and exchanges across various agents from different organizations become more and more routine. This change in culture is driven by regular meetings organized by network leaders/coordinators who are essential to establishing/maintaining networks. Facilitators are very useful when bridging different contexts and cultures. School leaders as gatekeepers of schools, teachers as point persons for the execution of collaborative efforts and parents need to be won over for an education network to develop in an uninhibited manner.

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