NW 15. Research Partnerships in Education

The network "Partnership in Education" (NW15) will be presented to better understand the perspectives offered to emerging researchers.

The issue of partnership is often seen as a simple agreement between two entities that will then delegate to others the practicalities of this teamwork. But, it is necessary to perceive the alliance for a task and a fixed time of social actors belonging to one or more networks of relations.

We have to bear in mind partnership as a "win-win" relationship, in which each partner can optimize the path to its goals”.  Otherwise, it is important for the actors in education to visualize the resistances and, that way, to see where the territory of "the other" begins (Bizzoni-Previeux, 2010).

Through the notion of network, it will not be to take as object of study the attributes of the individuals (sex, age, profession) but the relations and the interactions between the individuals. This promotes the understanding of both formal and informal sides of all social relations by focusing on the concrete relations observable between actors or institutions. It will be a matter of elucidating how the communication is organized.

The analysis of these networks will make it possible to identify the social forms that the actors put into place during their real interactions, that go through email exchanges, reports and/or formal/informal meetings. We do not start with an a priori classification of the social world but, starting from a grounded theory’s perspective, we have to elaborate a theory based on observation. Several decision support tools are usually used. Three partnership analysis softwares will be considered and presented.