Partnerships in education are not something new. There has been a significant amount of literature about various types, models and approaches of partnership in education and educational research, its different stakeholders (schools, parents, communities, HEIs, private sector, civil society organisations, governments), and diverse areas of cooperation (e.g. Anderson, Freebody 2014; Claypool, McLaughlin 2015; Otrel-Cass, Laing, Wolf 2022).

Quite often, the research paradigms referred to in such literature are engaged and transformative, and do not claim to be neutral. Instead, they explicitly state the positionality of the researcher and other partners. These types of partnership research aim at enacting social change, and promoting equity and social justice (e.g. John 2013). This is the case also in the field of global and sustainability education. UNESCO’s SDG 17 has given them special prominence.

The role of NGOs, or in general - civil society organisations, in working toward the embedding of global and sustainability education in the education system has been investigated by several scholars (Bergmueller 2013; Brown 2013; Rudnicki 2016; Tarozzi 2020). However, the aspect of partnership in research or educational activities in the field of global education was quite rarely given attention.

The presentation summarises the author’s several years of experience in doing research projects in collaboration and partnership with non-governmental organisations dealing with global education in Poland (see: Kuleta-Hulboj, Gontarska 2015; Kuleta-Hulboj, Kielak 2021; Kuleta-Hulboj 2022, 2023). All of these projects focused on global education in Poland and in the long term aimed to strengthen the position and development of global education in the country. In some of them, the author played the role of a hired researcher or consultant, others were designed as a participatory type of research and engaged not only academics and NGO representatives but also teachers, students and public administration officers (e.g. Kuleta-Hulboj, Kielak 2021). Some of the research projects explored the NGOs' activities in global education in Poland (Kuleta-Hulboj 2016, 2017), while others - the condition of global education in Poland, its strengths and weaknesses (Kuleta-Hulboj 2022, 2023) or the place of global and sustainability education in pre-service and in-service teacher training (Kuleta-Hulboj, Kielak 2021). In general, all of them could be labelled “engaged research”. 

In the presentation, I would like to focus on the partnership between academia and NGOs aimed at researching, doing and promoting global education in the Polish context. The subject of exploration would be; the nature of the partnership; its strengths and weaknesses, challenges and opportunities; and the roles of different stakeholders. Although the partners from academia and NGOs may have similar interests and goals, they differ in their professional backgrounds, skills and perspectives. They are not the same and their roles differ in the partnership projects. For instance, the NGO partners perform overly advocacy roles while the author as an educational researcher and university teacher is oriented towards educational dimension and knowledge co-production. 

Concerning this issue, another aspect to be touched upon is the status of the “hybrid” actors and their roles (Andreotti 2006; Green 2017). This category is used to describe people belonging to different 'educational worlds' (simultaneously or consecutively), such as academia, NGOs, schooling etc. Their knowledge and experience emerge from the intersection and overlap of different roles (e.g. academic, sanctioned as the creation of scientific knowledge; non-governmental, associated with activism and practice, e.g. educational; teacher and others).

The presentation is conceptualised around the following research questions: - What are the benefits and challenges of academia-NGO partnership in working for and promoting education towards a sustainable future? - What are the factors that facilitate or hinder successful and genuine partnerships and collaboration in research in the field of global and sustainable education? - What are the roles of each partner in this partnership/endeavour, and how do they transform (or maybe they should not?)? The research methods include (1) critical analysis of the documentation of the projects, (2) reflexivity understood as a method of critical reflection about the author’s practice and as a method of continuous professional learning (Fook 1999), (3) individual in-depth interviews with people holding the status of “hybridity” (academics with former NGO background, former academics now being a global education NGO activist etc.).

The expected outcomes and conclusions of the presentation will cover the following aspects: - reflections on challenges and opportunities of the academic-non-governmental partnership in educational research, and how these challenges may be overcome; - identification of the factors facilitating or hindering the successful partnership in research in global and sustainable education; - initial exploration and understanding of the role of “hybrid” individuals in the partnership in educational research and knowledge production.

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