Due to the global economic crisis in 2007/2008, the demand for dual vocational education and training (VET) has increased on a political and international level. A reaction to this is shown by the funding measures of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). In the course of this, the BMBF has developed funding programs that support the transfer of VET abroad. Therefore, the funding program "Vocational Training Export by German Providers" was launched in 2009 and ended in 2017 (42 funded projects). In 2017, this was followed by the funding program "Internationalisation of Vocational Education and Training (ibb)".

In ibb, 23 projects are funded by the BMBF, which are divided into four streams: Stream a (bilateral exploratory projects on the prerequisites and topics of VET cooperation) consist of at least one commercial partner, one partner with the focus on science and research (research partner) and an adequate partners from the target country. Streams b (support the model implementation of bilateral VET cooperation) and c (demand-oriented model implementation of initial and CVET services) consist of at least two providers of initial and CVET services, possibly a commercial partner, and the participation of a research partner is preferable.

The streams focus on insights into VET demands, relevant institutions, and implementation perspectives. In particular for b and c the development and testing of innovative, sustainable VET programs for the international education market.

Stream d (funding in the areas of VET research, evaluation, and networking activities at the program level) consists of one project, the scientific monitoring project (wb-ibb) of ibb.

The involvement of scientific monitoring in model projects in education has been legally anchored since the 1970s (Bundesministerium des Inneren, 1971), but ibb has a new constellation. The role of scientific monitoring is located at the programme level, the role of a research partner is located at the project level.  From an institutional point of view, research partners can be universities or research institutions, non-university research institutions, consultancies, and other institutions "that provide research contributions and/or are active in the field of vocational education and training" (BMBF, 2016).

The projects in the streams a to c are model projects and thus innovation projects (Kauffeld, 2001). It is assumed that innovation projects have better chances of success if the above-mentioned promoter roles support the innovation project (Gessler 2019; Peters & Gessler 2019).

The promoter model provides a research approach for analyzing these support services. In this model, four core roles are distinguished. The power promoter with hierarchical potential and a driving role. The expert promoter goes hand in hand with specific knowledge, which is essential for the innovation process. The process promoter brings organizational knowledge and internal networking skills and the relationship promoter strength the external networking. In the case of ibb with business organizations at home and abroad, educational institutions or social partners (Witte, 1973; Hauschildt & Chakrabarti, 1988; Gemünden & Walter, 1998; Gemünden et al., 2007). This research approach can be transferred to VET transfer and cooperation and thus to the project proposals in ibb.

With this background, we analyze how far the research partners have clear roles in the projects based on the promoter model.

Our research questions are:

1. What promoter role do the research partners perform in the projects?
2. How well do the research partners perceive their role as promoters?
3. To what extent do the external and self-perception of the promoter role of the research partners match?

Based on the project descriptions, it is assumed that the self-perception and external perception of the promoter role of the research partners in ibb coincide.

All projects of ibb are surveyed at the beginning by wb-ibb with a standardized online questionnaire. To clarify the research questions listed above and in connection with the promoter model presented, a secondary evaluation of the data material collected within the framework of wb-ibb takes place. The data collection was based on quantitative social science survey methods (Döring & Bortz 2016, p. 184). As the projects in ibb start in different time slots, the data used is from 2018 and 2019. All project partners were included in the survey for each project. The data of the project partners analyzed here comes from the questionnaire block "project structures". Due to the focus on role clarity of the research partners, a step-by-step selective case selection of the projects was carried out. The secondary analysis did not include projects that had not yet been surveyed (N=4), projects without a research partner (N=1), incomplete data sets, or missing evaluation of the research partners (N=3) and projects in which the coordination is also the research partner (N=4). In the following analysis, eleven projects with a total of 21 responses from project partners were considered. In the online survey, the assignment and assessment of the promoter role for one's own project was carried out by one project partner for all other project partners (external assessment) as well as an assessment for their own organization (self-assessment). To determine the questions of which promoter role do the research partners perform in the projects and how well do the research partners perceive their role as promoters, we analyze the external assessment of the project partners. To determine role clarity, we compared the self-assessment of the research partners (in which roles do the research partners see themselves?) with the external assessment of the project coordination (in which roles does the project coordination see the research partners?). If the assessments of each other agree, we have given a "1". We gave a "0" if the assessments did not match. Since four promoter roles are assessed, "4" is the maximum score that can be achieved, which corresponds to a perfect match (interpreted as role clarity). If there is a high degree of agreement, we speak of role clarity, and if there is a low degree of agreement, there would be role ambiguity in the projects (Kauffeld, 2001).

From the perspective of the project partners, the research partners take on the roles of expert promoters (37%) and relationship promoters (29%). In third place comes the process promoters (22%) and in fourth place the power promoters (12%). In the view of the projects, research partners primarily contribute to knowledge development and support in developing new contacts. From the perspective of the project partners, 80 % of the research partners perceive their promoter roles well or even very well, while 20 % think that the roles are perceived poorly to very poorly. This result speaks for clear goal pursuit and task accomplishment. The result indicates also that some of the research partners do not fulfill the expectations from the perspective of the project partners. One reason is that the roles in the projects were not sufficiently clarified at the beginning of the project and thus the mutual expectations cannot be satisfied (Kauffeld, 2001). The analysis has shown that there is little agreement between the external assessment of the project coordination of the promoter role of the research partners and the self-assessment of the research partners. The case of "no role clarity" does not exist. Seven projects are in the low to medium range and four projects have good to very good agreement values. This result indicates that in about 60% of the projects the role of the research partners is not sufficiently clear. We found complete role clarity in one project. We interpret this difference in the perception of the self-perception and the perception of others as role ambiguity, which obviously existed at the time of the survey. The research perspective outlined here will be deepened using qualitative guideline-based interviews to analyze the self-perception of the research partners and their tasks and functions.

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