Experiencing education partnerships

This sub-theme focuses on personal and collective experiences of teaching and learning across the education spectrum. From multi-academy charitable trusts in the UK, to the global ‘Teach for All’ network, to the outsourcing of public schooling in Liberia, increasingly teaching and learning experiences result from the inputs of multiple stakeholders. The range of stakeholders and their inputs have become even more complex, diverse and important since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic which has marked an unprecedented turn to digital and blended/hybrid approaches to teaching and learning in all stages of education. However,as the number of parties who invest their time and resources in education increases, what is valued and measured in education appears to be contracting. While narrowly focused learning metrics demonstrate the scale of challenges and have helped to generate a powerful argument to focus the world’s attention on education, there is a risk that big data can distract us from the small stories that help us understand what is happening in classrooms and other learning spaces, and why. At worst, it can convince us that these are not worth engaging with. This sub-theme positively moves away from the notion of educators and learners as data-points and encourages research that explores and analyses education partnerships and practices as they are perceived, experienced, shaped and mediated by people on the ground as well as the contextual conditions – socio-cultural, economic, political  and so on – that are involved. This sub-theme especially welcomes contributions that are co-authored or co-conceptualised with educators/learners, and that adopt critical and/or creative conceptual and methodological lenses to better understand and communicate different educational experiences.

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