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In this paper, the author draws on a qualitative case study of a place-based food justice project (FJP) at an urban public charter high school to examine the role of community-school partnerships (CSPs) in the FJP and marginalized students' experiences of these partnerships. Observations and interviews with students, teachers, and community representatives suggest that the marketized context in which these partnerships unfolded undermined the potential benefits of CSPs by incentivizing schools to prioritize private benefits for both schools and community organizations over students' preferences and priorities. The extent to which CSPs might serve students' interests may hinge on how other stakeholders conceptualize "community." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological advances have the potential to support educational partnerships between schools and parents. While the positive benefits of technology for these partnerships have been reported in the literature, there is still incomprehension about how to best use this technology to meet the needs of Indigenous parents. Given the intergenerational impacts of colonisation, socioeconomic stress, structural barriers in schooling, and other critical challenges experienced by Indigenous parents, the use of technology as a tool for partnering with Indigenous parents requires careful consideration of their experiences. Therefore, the aim of this narrative review was to describe key attributes of the use of technology in home-school partnerships with Indigenous parents. Findings revealed that technology integration was beneficial to increasing Indigenous parental engagement, as it was connected to the wellbeing and future of Indigenous young generations. However, it could also exacerbate divide, raise cultural tensions, and bring undesirable consequences. Therefore, as a practical implication, schools should embed culturally appropriate approaches when adopting technology in their partnerships with Indigenous parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industry-academia collaboration (IAC) has long been a source of discussion in various ways. A vital first step toward closing the gap is fostering alumni engagement in industry and academia. Industry-academia collaborations are like earth and water, and they live in harmony. They cannot exist apart from one another. The collaborative effort between industry and academia promotes improvement and innovation in technology and innovative research and enables the university to be more relevant to the industry. This article proposes a collaborative approach based on alumni influences and uses secondary data on the influences of alumni in engineering to enrich the collaboration between industry and academia. The industry and academia utilize the alumni's potential to facilitate communication and offer their students and staff facilities. The research findings can be used by policymakers to innovate in the field of engineering and to strengthen the partnership between industry and academia in society. The model enables academia and industry to utilize the alumni strengths in enriching the collaboration; it also enhances academic research output, recruitment, fundraising, marketing, product promotion, and internship opportunities for students via alumni active participation. We propose some significant agendas for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of relationships and sexuality education as part of Health and Physical Education in The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum. Learning Media Limited.) involves a range of people sharing their perspectives in order to shape the subject on paper and in practice. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative collective case study in three primary schools in Aotearoa. Experimenting with Appreciative Inquiry, we found that connections and conversations between a wide variety of people and organisations have a critical role to play in relation to planning and teaching relationships and sexuality education in schools: (i) Schools and teachers working in partnership with colleagues within and across schools, (ii) connections with whānau and relationships with learners, and (iii) access to wider supports and services. Our findings suggest that having conversations and establishing and maintaining productive partnerships between a variety of people are critical if relationships and sexuality education is to live up to its potential and meet learners' needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in learning environments are pivotal when schools and local organizations embark on educational partnerships. Local organisations offer specialized knowledge to schools and, as classes move out schools, the contribution of the physical setting is crucial and central to understand the didactical potential of learning outside school. Therefore, we explore how local organizations exploit their specific physical settings and the materials in situ for educational purposes and how they bridge the gap between their specialized knowledge and students' general academic knowledge and prerequisites. Through our case study, we found that teaching outside school has the capacity for the exemplary in teaching, but this widely depends on educators' didactics and their ability to relate learning content to the physical setting and materials in situ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Change strategies may leverage interpersonal relationships and conversations to spread teaching innovations among science faculty. Knowledge sharing refers to the process by which individuals transfer information and thereby spread innovative ideas within an organization. We use knowledge sharing as a lens for identifying factors that encourage productive teaching-related conversations between individuals, characterizing the context and content of these discussions, and understanding how peer interactions may shape instructional practices. In this study, we interview 19 science faculty using innovative teaching practices about the teaching-focused conversations they have with different discussion partners. Results: This qualitative study describes characteristics of the relationship between discussion partners, what they discuss with respect to teaching, the amount of help-seeking that occurs, and the perceived impacts of these conversations on their teaching. We highlight the role of office location and course overlap in bringing faculty together and characterize the range of topics they discuss, such as course delivery and teaching strategies. We note the tendency of faculty to seek out partners with relevant expertise and describe how faculty perceive their discussion partners to influence their instructional practices and personal affect. Finally, we elaborate on how these themes vary depending on the relationship between discussion partners. Conclusions: The knowledge sharing framework provides a useful lens for investigating how various factors affect faculty conversations around teaching. Building on this framework, our results lead us to propose two hypotheses for how to promote sharing teaching knowledge among faculty, thereby identifying productive directions for further systematic inquiry. In particular, we propose that productive teaching conversations might be cultivated by fostering collaborative teaching partnerships and developing departmental structures to facilitate sharing of teaching expertise. We further suggest that social network theories and other examinations of faculty behavior can be useful approaches for researching the mechanisms that drive teaching reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The enterprise of sustainability science extends beyond the academy to address pressing environmental issues through collaboration. It coincides with trends in higher education institutions (HEIs) towards an expanded mission for addressing societal challenges as well as greater accountability. In this paper, we aim to establish an instrument for assessing the performance of sustainability science initiatives in HEIs. The performance of three HEI–community partnerships for sustainability science in Ontario, Canada (the Brock-Lincoln Living Lab, the Excellence in Environmental Stewardship Initiative, and Niagara Adapts) were examined using the HEI–Community Partnership Performance Index (HCPPI). Our preliminary results suggest that the HCPPI is a reliable, valid, and easy-to-administer tool for accurately assessing the performance of HEI–community partnerships for sustainability science. Incorporating systemic performance assessments into HEI–community partnerships promotes accountability, transparency, and continuous improvement. It also serves as a vital feedback mechanism by fostering reflection, adaptation, and learning—critical components to sustainability science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pursuing creativity through collaboration with others is an important learning goal in education. The purpose of this study is to investigate how team goal orientations are related to team creativity and team achievement in collaborative learning contexts with the aim of providing a supportive environment for creative learning. Learning communities were chosen for the study because they provide a context for collaborative learning, which is considered a high-impact educational practice. A path model was proposed to test the direct and indirect relationships between team goal orientations (mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance), team interaction, and team learning outcomes (team creativity and team achievement). In particular, based on the literature review, the interactive relationship between the team mastery and team performance-approach goal orientations was included in the model. Data were collected from 589 college students divided into 175 teams who participated in learning communities at a South Korean university; these data were aggregated and analyzed at the team level. The path analysis results indicated that team mastery goal orientation was positively related to increased team interaction and team creativity, and the team performance-approach goal orientation was positively related to team creativity and team achievement. Interestingly, a significant interaction effect between the team mastery and team performance-approach goal orientations on team interaction was revealed. Team interaction was significantly related to team creativity but not to team achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As we look ahead to the next 20 years of educational change, I argue that broader community contexts interplay with students' in-school learning, and thus, we, as an educational change field, ought to examine more deeply the role school–family–community partnerships play in the students' holistic development. This consideration is particularly relevant in the environments where inequities in the access to resources and opportunities for many students persist. Through an examination of community schools strategy, I offer considerations school–family–community partnerships have in facilitating positive conditions for learning. I close with a call for broadening the educational change discourse to be inclusive of community partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education faces attack, erosion, underfunding and loss of capacity in contexts of armed conflict and state fragility. Losses in university capacities through casualties, injuries and internal displacement or forced migration are difficult to compensate for due to the degree of investment required to restore or lay new foundations for quality teaching and research, while attacks on universities may also discourage learners from attending tertiary education. Drawing upon a research and capacity development project in Somaliland, we propose a global strategy for higher education partnerships in teaching, research and development with practical outcomes in the area of education, conflict and peacebuilding. This strategy would address research and pedagogical training needs for higher education teachers; develop educational partnerships between higher education institutions in conflict-affected regions to facilitate collaborative teaching exchange; and enhance collaboration between higher education institutions, civil society and I/NGOs to promote peacebuilding in conflict-affected societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internal medicine (IM) subinternship has been a long-established clinical experience in the final phase of medical school deemed by key stakeholders as a crucial rotation to prepare senior medical students for internship. Medical education has changed greatly since the first national curriculum for this course was developed in 2002 by the Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine (CDIM). Most notably, competency-based medical education (CBME) has become a fixture in graduate medical education and has gradually expanded into medical school curricula. Still, residency program directors and empirical studies have identified gaps and inconsistencies in knowledge and skills among new interns. Recognizing these gaps, the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine (APDIM) surveyed its members in 2010 and identified four core skills essential for intern readiness. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) also published 13 core entrustable professional activities (EPAs) for entering residency to be expected of all medical school graduates. Results from the APDIM survey along with the widespread adoption of CBME informed this redesign of the IM subinternship curriculum. The authors provide an overview of this new guide developed by the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine (AAIM) Medical Student-to-Resident Interface Committee (MSRIC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large surgical audits and research projects are complex and costly to deliver, but increasingly surgical trainees are delivering these projects within formal collaboratives and research networks. Surgical trainee collaboratives are now recognised as a valuable part of the research infrastructure, with many perceived benefits for both the trainees and the wider surgical speciality. In this article, we describe the activity of ENT trainee research collaboratives within the UK, and summarise how INTEGRATE, the UK National ENT Trainee Research Network, successfully delivered a national audit of epistaxis management. The prospective audit collected high-quality data from 1826 individuals, representing 94% of all cases that met the inclusion criteria at the 113 participating sites over the 30-day audit period. It is hoped that the audit has provided a template for subsequent high-quality and cost-effective national studies, and we discuss the future possibilities for ENT trainee research collaboratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to discussion of theory application in higher education research. We examine 59 empirical research papers from specialist journals that use a particular theory: activity theory. We scrutinise stated reasons for choosing the theory, functions played by the theory, and how the theory is valorised. We find that the theory is usually chosen for its direct empirical applicability; used for abstraction, explanation and contextualisation; and valorised for apprehending complex situational dynamics. It is rarely chosen to challenge conceptualisation of the research object; used to establish investigative paradigms; or valorised in ways that implicate wider bodies of knowledge or potential theory development. We argue that higher education researchers should reconsider how their application of activity theory is interwoven with interpretative processes, how the theory might frame research design rather than simply data analysis, and how they account for the range of roles that the theory actually plays across research endeavours. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When analysing course-level data by subgroups based upon some demographic characteristics, the numbers in analytical cells are often too small to allow inferences to be drawn that might help in the enhancement of practices. However, relatively simple analyses can provide useful pointers. This article draws upon a study involving a partnership with 13 UK universities to illustrate a relatively simple methodology that is more widely generalisable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is growing interest, worldwide, in collaboration between schools and community organisations in contributing to and enriching school science programs, yet such collaborations are inadequately understood. This paper reports data from an Australian study designed to probe the views of members of the community who have participated in a broad range of such collaborations in school science programmes in order to better understand the issues which impact on their operation. The data were collected by interviews with the community participants selected by opportunistic sampling. The analysis reveals a number of issues-purposes, communication, organisational structures and curriculum-which can be seen as impacting on the collaborations. These are examined through the concepts of communities of practice, boundaries and boundary crossing, associated with people from scientific communities of practice interacting with school communities. The paper reflects on the implications of these findings for constructing effective school-community collaboration in school science programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education and K-12 school partnerships are typically designed with an end-goal that serves the instructional needs of one group over the other. For this project, a university professor and elementary school instructor used problem-based and project-based learning strategies to design a curriculum that served the academic needs of both groups of students. Undergraduate students in an urban planning course partnered with elementary students from a local school to work on an interdependent civic engagement project. The partnership provided innovative, twenty-first teaching for both groups of students while also reinforcing public service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education innovations often have a complicated set of assumptions about the contexts in which they are implemented, which may not be explicit. Education technology innovations in particular may have additional technical and cultural assumptions. As a result, education technology research and development efforts as well as scaling efforts can be slowed or made less efficacious because some of these basic assumptions (called load bearing conditions) about the match and prerequisites for the innovation are not met. The assumptions-based planning model is adapted as a methodology to help identify the load-bearing conditions for innovations. The process and impact of its use with two cases of education technology-oriented research and development efforts is reported. The work demonstrates the potential value of this LBC process for recruiting, selecting, and supporting research sites, for innovation designers to target efforts that strengthen implementation and support of scaling. Recommendations are made for others engaged in partnerships with education providers around developing, implementing and testing new education technology based innovations in more effective ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research indicates that learning from erroneous examples (EE) is superior to correct examples because errors may provide students with a stimulus to spontaneously produce more self-explanations, leading to better learning outcomes. However, because most studies were conducted in individual settings, it remains an open question whether the advantage of EE could be reproduced in collaborative settings. Therefore, this study used a 2 × 2 factorial design varying in example types (correct vs. erroneous examples) and learning settings (individuals vs. collaboration). An experimental study of a 2-week course on subtraction for third grade students was conducted ( N = 109). Results indicated that collaborative learning may enhance the transfer knowledge of subtraction. The improvements were still maintained over 2 weeks. In addition, collaboration also facilitated students' confidence in handling errors. However, there was no significant difference in promoting isomorphic and transfer knowledge between learning from correct and erroneous examples. Additionally, this study also explored the absence of the intended benefit of erroneous examples from a cognitive load perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims at underlining the role played by extra-academic and autonomous organizations strongly connected with university institutions and researchers in producing, acquiring, transferring and transforming knowledge. The study examines a particular Italian case, thePolitecnico Calzaturiero, a private institution providing technical training and research services operating in North-eastern Italy. The analysis of this experience suggests that, in traditional manufacturing areas, organizations playing a key role in managing the ‘productive transformation of knowledge’ may be neither universities nor firms. ‘Special organizations’, like the one discussed in this article, are deeply embedded in their economic and institutional environment, are closely interconnected within a dense and extended network of various actors, engage in complex and time-consuming processes, and can be understood as organizationalrelé, that is entities which are able to connect structures that are usually not connected. For these reasons, they represent an underestimated resource for universities’ third mission and its management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical analysis of the edu-businesses currently working in partnership with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority to deliver the Commonwealth government policy initiative of the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). These emerging public-private partnerships (PPPs) exemplify new heterarchical governance structures in Australia, where a network of public and private agents now contribute to education policy processes. In analysing the NAPLAN policy network, this account seeks to proffer a critical analysis on the evolving PPPs in Australia and ascertains in whose interests and with what outcomes these PPPs operate. The NAPLAN policy network is analysed in relation to the contemporary state and its changing modus operandi, in which I draw on the notions of heterarchies, networks and new governance structures in education to understand these developments. Network ethnography is employed to document the network of PPPs that are associated with NAPLAN and other government initiatives in Australia, and in particular, I reflect on the activities of Pearson and the Australian Council for Educational Research to problematise what these policy networks mean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines educational stratification in highbrow cultural participation. There are two contrasting explanations of why cultural participation is stratified. The status hypothesis predicts that people come to appreciate particular forms of art because it expresses their belonging to a certain social group. The cognitive hypothesis stipulates that cultural participation depends on a person's cognitive abilities, which is why educational stratification in cultural consumption is so evident, especially among consumers of high culture. However, to test these explanations, previous work predominantly relied on an individual's level of education, thus confounding the two mechanisms. We test the status and cognitive hypothesis using data from the International Adult Literacy Survey, covering 18 countries. First, by including an individual's literacy skills, we separate the effect of cognitive ability from that of education. The remaining effect of education can be seen as a better measure of the status-related motives for cultural participation. Second, we examine whether stratification varies across countries. The findings show that the status-related effect of education on cultural participation is smaller in societies with larger educational expansion and intergenerational educational mobility. This is in line with the status explanation, which holds that boundaries between educational groups are less exclusionary in societies that are educationally less stratified. In contrast, the relation between cognitive skills and cultural participation is unaffected by distributional variation in education, as the cognitive hypothesis predicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of President Obama's Early Education Plan, Congress authorized $500 million in the 2014 Omnibus Act to support states and communities in expanding high-quality early learning through the creation of a new Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership initiative. This initiative has placed renewed interest on research regarding the nature and benefits of Head Start and child care partnerships. In this study, we sought to confirm-or call into question-the benefits of Head Start and child care partnerships by performing secondary analysis of data collected from child care centers in partnership and matched non-partnering comparison centers. We analyzed survey data from 61 child care centers-approximately half of which were engaged in partnership with Head Start-and analyzed observational data from 66 classrooms within these centers. The observational data had been collected using two psychometrically valid and reliable measures of quality-the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale Revised Edition (ECERS-R) and the Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation Toolkit (ELLCO). Results show that classrooms at partnership centers demonstrated higher observed global quality in all six subscales of the ECERS-R, as well as the total overall score compared to non-partnership classrooms. Moreover, classrooms in partnership performed higher on seven out of ten subscales, as measured by the ELLCO, with the largest difference seen in language and literacy practices. To further explore the potential benefits of partnerships on classroom quality, we developed hierarchical regression models. These results provided further evidence regarding the benefits of partnership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational education (TNE) has been a growth area for UK universities over the last decade. The standard typology classifies TNE by the nature of the activity (i.e., distance learning, international branch campus, franchise, and validation). By analysing a large number of TNE partnerships around the world, this study reveals that the current typology has declining value because partnerships are becoming multidimensional and blurring the boundaries between one type and another. It draws on partnership theory and transaction cost analysis to develop a new risk-based typology, using six dimensions of a TNE partnership. The new typology provides a risk profile for a TNE partnership which identifies the sources of reputational risk to the home university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we argue that the scholarship on marriages and families provides invaluable insights into town-gown relationships. Marital typologies are used to generate insights into what happens between campus and community relationships over time, and a line of family scholarship provides some additional illumination about the ways in which institutions and municipalities can strike a healthy balance between meeting their idiosyncratic needs and pursuing shared goals and objectives. We use four case examples to illustrate the application of the typological structure, and these examples are followed by a discussion of implications for leadership on both sides of the town-gown relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hosted by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) and collocated with the International Conference on Network and Service Management, SVM 2013 was the seventh International DMTF Academic Alliance Workshop on Systems and Virtualization Management (SVM). SVM 2013 was held in Zurich, Switzerland on October 18, 2013. Featuring seven presentations surrounding cloud, OpenSAF, open standards, and CIM, SVM 2013 also included a joint poster session with another workshop, an invited talk by a guest speaker, a keynote speech given by the DMTF President, Jeff Hilland, and closed with an informal interactive group discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last few years, foreign institutions have increasingly sought to establish partnerships with African universities. Likewise, African universities have increasingly sought to establish linkages with foreign institutions. Different factors suggest that these partnerships will continue to be a major focus in the future. This study draws from a survey of a random sample of 468 university administrators, academic staff and postgraduate students at two major public universities in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It estimates the level of participation in international partnership activities and examines factors related to this participation. The study found that 4 in 10 stakeholders at the two institutions had participated in partnership activities, and that participation was a function of awareness of partnership opportunities, the use of technology and stakeholder status. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents a study of small-group interaction in the context of collaborative learning in undergraduate education. The student groups participated in collaborative projects, which involved setting-up, conducting, and reporting on empirical research studies. This study sheds light on the nature of productive interactions, the joint efforts to co-construct knowledge and the shared epistemic agency expected to emerge when groups are addressing ill-structured, complex problems in a collaboration over time. In-depth qualitative analysis and descriptive statistics were used to analyze and interpret interaction data and developing knowledge objects (i.e., research reports) collected during a 20-week project period. The findings show that productive interactions can take different forms, with discourse-based and object-oriented being the most relevant patterns arising. In the latter case, the emergent knowledge objects also influence the course and productivity of the interaction. Finally, groups manifesting shared epistemic agency produce knowledge objects more complex and suitable to the problems addressed. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the collaborative learning process that includes work on knowledge objects over time. The implications for the educational practice and further research point towards the need for a better understanding of the way groups function when challenged to address complex problems and to participate in knowledge production, how these processes can benefit learning, and what is needed in terms of pedagogical and technological support, to enable students to be more than mere course-takers, but also producers of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University-community partnerships (UCP's) are exciting areas of academic and social interest. This interest seems to be a response to the multiple challenges academic institutions and communities face in the context of the social, economic and institutional changes that affect both universities and communities worldwide. Along with the acknowledged benefits of such initiatives, studies have also noticed that UCP's tend to engender internal tensions and conflicts which harm the spirit of collaboration between partners. This article challenges the conception of UCP's as inherently conflictive and suggests a more complex vision. It argues that UCP's can be better understood through organizational paradox theory. This theory offers a way to grapple with the complexity of UCP's and overcome the binary conception of conflict or collaboration. The article illustrates the interrelatedness of conflict and collaboration by presenting seven areas that characterize the paradoxical nature of UCP's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve on the classic school trip to the museum and the traditional distinctions between formal and informal learning, every year we run a project where the schools (first the teachers and then the pupils) are actively involved right from the very first stages of planning. The various projects realised so far involve schools with children of different age levels, from kindergarten to high school, and aim to provide a rewarding museum experience for each level. The various phases of each project follow a timeline where the specific roles of each group of actors is set out. All our projects rely extensively on history of science, but in a number of ways: using primary and secondary sources, museum exhibitions, multimedia and hands-on reconstructions of historical experiments. We mix all these resources together to offer a historical route suitable to the various age groups. Creative analogical thinking, iconographic similarities and coincidences between the scientific and artistic domains are encouraged especially with children from 3 to 13 years old. These comparisons become pretexts for analysis, reflection and creative production also at the graphic level. In this paper we outline our methodology in the specific case of a laboratory and exhibition experience built around the person and work of Galileo. One of the results has been the involvement of the pupils in a new, unexpected emotional experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports research into undergraduate design learning through an off-campus partnership. The Sorrell Foundation's Joinedupdesign for Academies programme involved partnerships between university design departments, 'failing' 11-18 schools and professional designers, in the context of a funding commitment to rebuild/renew school buildings in the UK, and an ideological commitment to remodel schools as 'Academies'. We investigated the impact on 12 undergraduate Design students' learning as they partnered pupils at two secondary schools in a live regeneration project, following both schools' redesign/relaunch as 'Academies'. Using a mixed methods case study approach, we report the acquisition of a wide range of employability skills, vital for professional designers, through an innovative learning model in which pupils act as clients. In terms of design education, these partnerships provided a rare and authentic exposure to the complex demands of publicly-funded work for undergraduate design students, and as such offer a new and potentially interesting model for experiential design education, which bridges campus and off-campus learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although parental involvement is often a priority on the quality agenda of schools for primary and secondary education, it is still not usual to involve parents as an educational partner in the actual learning process of their child. Rather than adopting an open approach, teachers tend to tell parents what they should do or keep them at a safe distance. At the same time, parents are increasingly becoming better informed, more critical and thus are more strongly positioned towards school. They address teachers more directly in case of problems or disappointing results of their child. Clearly, this might lead to a negative impact on the mutual relationship especially when parents' emotional involvement conflicts with a professional and detached attitude of teachers. Based on the results of several studies that provide ample evidence that parental involvement in the learning process can improve learning outcomes, it is argued that there is much to be gained in forming educational partnerships between parents and schools. Different dimensions of active parenting are discussed, as well as prerequisites for successful implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative research partnerships are widely recognised as being of value. This paper examines the benefits, constraints and challenges of research partnerships between teacher education faculties in universities and teacher employing authorities or departments of education and schooling. A case study of a collaborative research partnership between an education faculty and a teacher employing authority is examined to illustrate the features that supported a truly collaborative partnership and also to provide insights about the challenges that occurred. This research partnership was studied using self-study methods. The partnership between the individual researchers was examined in the context of the systemic partnership, to investigate the impact of the two contexts on each other and on the partnership. Constraints and facilitators of this collaborative partnership are identified in this paper. The feasibility of truly collaborative partnerships between institutions with differing aims and methods of operation is critiqued, using this particular partnership as an illustrative case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western governments around the globe have become increasingly focused on the successful transition of young people from school to further education and/or training. It could be suggested that for many countries this is the key focus of their youth policies. Nevertheless, the divide between those young people who manage to successfully transition into a meaningful careers pathway and those who do not continues to widen. Establishing stronger welfare safety nets and better youth services that can respond more effectively to the needs of young people as they reach fruition have all been a part of the policy and practice developments of the last decade. And although these are all important aspects of a functioning community, at the centre of young people's lives remains their connection to education and thus to their school. This connection, if successfully positive, can develop resiliency, community links, social capital and an economic future for young people. These are daunting responsibilities to place on one institution. This paper examines one school's approach to establishing innovative careers pathways for young people. It also discusses the importance of partnerships between schools, community services and other community, government and parent stakeholders in the creation, application and evaluation of careers and transition programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of partnerships between schools and practicing scientists came to prominence in the United States in the mid 1980s. The call by government for greater private sector involvement in education to raise standards in science achievement saw a variety of programmes developed, ranging from short-term sponsorships through to longer-term, project-based interactions. Recently, school-scientist partnerships (SSPs) have been rekindled as a means of assisting schools to motivate and inspire students in science, improve levels of teachers' science knowledge, and increase awareness of the type and variety of career opportunities available in the sciences (Rennie and Howitt, ). This article summarises research that used an interpretive case study method to examine the performance of a two-year SSP pilot between a government-owned science research institute, and 200 students from two Intermediate (years 7 and 8) schools in New Zealand. It explored the experiences of scientists involved in the partnerships, and revealed difficulties in bridging the void that existed between the outcomes-driven, commercially-focused world of research scientists, and the more process-oriented, tightly structured, and conservative world of teachers and schools. Findings highlight the pragmatic realities of establishing partnerships, from the perspective of scientists. These include acute awareness of the nature of school systems, conventions and environments; the science, technological and pedagogical knowledge of teachers; teacher workload issues and pressures, curriculum priorities and access to science resources. The article identifies areas where time and effort should be invested to ensure successful partnership outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes processes and objectives of transnational higher-education partnerships (THEPs) devoted to research and sustainable development by applying concepts and insights from chaos theory, Rosenau's work on turbulence, Farazmand's contributions on institutionalized chaos and the management of cascading crises, and the transnational-competence framework. The bifurcation of research and development activity into asymmetrical and symmetrical processes and objectives provides the focus for analysis. Building on Farazmand's insight regarding the positive possibilities of transformative change, the conclusion explores possibilities for amplifying the symmetrical trajectory. Given the structural forces of global capitalism and local political constraints, the range of symmetrical process- and outcome-path possibilities for THEPs is now bounded by the strange attractors of resource inequalities and collaborative decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to describe an approach that can be used by schools to understand low income minority parents' goals for the education of their children and to design responsive strategies to support these goals. Focus groups of minority mothers with low income levels are conducted and the information collected is used by schools for promoting dialogue and self-reflection to potentially improve the quality of the school's home-school partnerships. The article includes examples of information collected through focus groups with two groups of mothers: Latina and African-American. Findings from the focus groups are used to design home-school partnership practices more responsive to the needs and beliefs of minority parents with low income levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family-centered practice is accepted as best and effective practice by early childhood professional organizations including the National Association for the Education of Young Children, The Council for Exceptional Children's Division of Early Childhood, and The National Board of Professional Teaching Standards. The main objective of family-centered practice is the development of a reciprocal family partnership in order to provide effective early childhood services to young children and families. The literature reveals that there are issues in early childhood teacher preparation in terms of the level of emphasis on family-centered practice, the implementation of a standalone course versus infusion of family-centered content throughout coursework, and the linkage of coursework to practical experience. Teacher perceptions of families have a great deal of influence on the nature of relationships between teachers and families. This literature review illuminates the necessity for teacher preparation programs and school administration to regularly review programming to make certain that students and practicing teachers are adequately prepared to efficiently serve young children in the context of their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moving evidence-based practices into real-world settings is a high priority for education and public health. This paper describes the development of a partnership among the Houston Independent School District, the American Institutes of Research, and the Houston Federation of Teachers to support research on and program sustainability for the Good Behavior Game, a team-based classroom behavior management strategy that has shown positive impact in randomized field trials. The conceptual framework guiding partnership development is presented, followed by an application of the framework in Houston. Lessons learned and implications for the next stage of research and practice are then discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With growing evidence that treatment as usual may have limited effectiveness in mental health the pressure on service providers to be accountable and produce evidence as to the effectiveness of their services has increased. Measurement Feedback Systems, such as the Contextualized Feedback System (CFS), have the potential to be powerful tools for service providers in assessing their own effectiveness at multiple levels with an organization. These systems represent an amalgamation of the data driven world of science and the experience driven world of clinical practice. However, the synthesis of these two worlds is not without significant challenges as these two very different cultures can easily clash. The key for successful collaboration in developing and implementing Measurement Feedback Systems is a good university-practice partnership that has a strong foundation in common goals and the positive relationships among its members. In addition, the partnership needs to be flexible so that it can adapt to new challenges and continuously grow with each obstacle. These are some of several lessons learned the authors of this article will share as part of their experience with developing and implementing CFS in one of the largest behavioral health service providers in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is solid evidence for strategies and programs that, if implemented with fidelity in schools, will enhance the mental health of children and youth. These practices are, however, inconsistently applied and rarely evaluated programmatically in every day practice. In recent years, implementation variables that influence uptake have received attention. An emerging area of interest is the role that research partnerships might play in narrowing the gap between science and practice. Drawing on the literature and practice examples, collaborators from the United States and Canada explore the role of partnerships in bringing the worlds of research and practice closer into alignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyses of public-private academic partnerships (PPAPs) in terms of management, organization, funding, and partner relationships are presented with three case studies, selected to display a range of governance models. The increasing challenges of Big Science seem to demand the merging of the public, private, and academic sectors into a single collaboration. Three conclusions are drawn: (1) complex PPAPs can be successful if partner's roles are clearly defined; (2) Big Science needs PPAPs to achieve results; and (3) the management style for CLEANER, a Collaborative Large-Scale Engineering Analysis Network for Environmental Research, should make use of a hierarchical PPAP organizational style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers world news briefs related to partnerships. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and leading semiconductor manufacturers partnered to make the advanced extreme ultraviolet microscope. Applied Seals North America Inc. joined Sematech's Mask Blank Defect Reduction program which is an academic partnership. A partnership was created to develop integrated assembly and test solutions for advanced silicon nodes between Global Foundries and Amkor Technology Inc.

In this paper we present a case study about a community of practice's foundation and development among Italian teachers, researchers and university students who participated in a European project aimed at developing and testing innovative pedagogical models and technologies for collaborative knowledge building. Forty-five people (34 teachers, five researchers and six university students) participated in the community of adults that interacted for a school year both face to face and online. We analyzed interactions in order to study the roles, forms and distribution of participation in that community, and the content of teachers' reflections about the activity. The analysis focuses particularly on different modalities of participation between expert teachers (involved in the project from the beginning) and novices, novice and expert being treated as relevant dimensions according to Wenger's model. Conversations were transcribed and a qualitative analysis of face-to-face and online discussion performed. The diversity of roles and different modalities of participation between social factors involved in the community, in particular between novice and expert teachers, emerged from the analysis. In final focus groups, teachers underlined innovative potentialities as well as difficulties related to computer-supported collaborative learning, both in classroom activities and in teacher training. In these final focus groups, novice teachers participated in the community, becoming more competent and conscious partners in shared planning with the expert teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactive tabletops are gaining increased attention from CSCL researchers. This paper analyses the relation between this technology and teaching and learning processes. At a global level, one could argue that tabletops convey a socio-constructivist flavor: they support small teams that solve problems by exploring multiple solutions. The development of tabletop applications also witnesses the growing importance of face-to-face collaboration in CSCL and acknowledges the physicality of learning. However, this global analysis is insufficient. To analyze the educational potential of tabletops in education, we present 33 points that should be taken into consideration. These points are structured on four levels: individual user-system interaction, teamwork, classroom orchestration, and socio-cultural contexts. God lies in the details. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including interactive tabletops in education, an experiment on scripted collaboration and computer support in education, and an exploration of community-based learning.

In this paper I examine the history of the integration of mathematics education into the Science Education Centre, which had been established by physicist, John de Laeter, within the School of Science and Engineering at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. De Laeter's vision for science education was that teachers should have access to professional education that allowed them to extend their discipline and pedagogical knowledge using strategies that brought together theory and practice in ways that were meaningful for teachers. This model was expanded when mathematics education was also included, paving the way also for technology education. I present the history of this integration laying out the themes that are important for the continued educational effectiveness of the Science and Mathematics Education Centre (SMEC) and the role that mathematics education has played in this process. As the title suggests, this article focuses on the activities of the group of mathematics educators who have worked within the Science and Mathematics Education Centre of Curtin University since it was established 30 or so years ago and who have contributed to its reputation. The two streams operated then and now more-or-less independently in matters of student thesis topic choice but offered students opportunities for interaction that might not have been available if the 'M' had not been incorporated into the Science Education Centre (SEC). This article's focus is on the mathematics educators who contributed to the Centre's success and reputation, highlighting the synergistic relationship between mathematics and science that helped to make SMEC a leading center for mathematics and science education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper situates the philosophy and politics of partnership in educational development cooperation in the context of wider epistemological and axiological shifts in contemporary social theory. Partnerships in development cooperation are also considered in the light of the alleged failure of international development assistance, a claim that has received much attention with the publication of, among others, William Easterly's The White Man's Burden: Why the West's efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good () and of Dambisa Moyo's Dead Aid: Why aid is not working and how there is another way for Africa (). Partnership as a development strategy offers one response to these claims, but if shared development objectives and policies, shared ownership, shared decisions about where aid is targeted, shared rights, shared responsibilities, and shared implementation strategies still leave the education development community facing challenges as big as ever, it might be time, the paper concludes, to consider whether the concept of partnership has not been expanded too far as a modality in development cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of meaningful partnerships with communities is a shared concern of many higher education institutions. However, the building of significant partnerships between universities and communities is still a complex task, which generates multiple tensions. Based on a qualitative study that examined the lived experiences of participants in an innovative university-community partnership in Israel, the article analyzes the concept of partnership from a social constructivist theoretical perspective. The study focused on four research areas: the experience of partnership; the perception of partnership; the barriers to partnership-building, and the impact of participation on participants. Findings challenge essentialist views of partnership and highlight the constructed and discursive nature of the concept. The article found several crucial factors to be acknowledged in the process of partnership management: role perspectives, group affiliation, institutional context, power relations, the organizational culture of the partnership, and the societal perceptions of social problems addressed by the partnership. It concludes with some recommendations for the management of more meaningful university-community partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses university finances, focusing on a controversy surrounding a donation made by Saif al’Islam Gaddafi, son of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi, to the Centre for Global Governance at England's London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). It considers universities' missions and roles in society, commenting on associations between higher education, governments, and the private sector. The author considers universities' commitments to political progress. The views of LSE professors David Held and Richard Sennett are also discussed.

Modeling user behavior (user modeling) via data mining faces a critical unresolved issue: how to build a collaboration model based on frequent analysis of students in order to ascertain whether collaboration has taken place. Numerous human-based and knowledge-based solutions to this problem have been proposed, but they are time-consuming or domain-dependent. The diversity of these solutions and their lack of common characteristics are an indication of how unresolved this issue remains. Bearing this in mind, our research has made progress on several fronts. First, we have found supportive evidence, based on a collaborative learning experience with hundreds of students over three consecutive years, that an approach using domain independent learning that is transferable to current e-learning platforms helps both students and teachers to manage student collaboration better. Second, the approach draws on a domain-independent modeling method of collaborative learning based on data mining that helps clarify which user-modeling issues are to be considered. We propose two data mining methods that were found to be useful for evaluating student collaboration, and discuss their respective advantages and disadvantages. Three data sources to generate and evaluate the collaboration model were identified. Third, the features being modeled were made accessible to students in several meta-cognitive tools. Their usage of these tools showed that the best approach to encourage student collaboration is to show only the most relevant inferred information, simply displayed. Moreover, these tools also provide teachers with valuable modeling information to improve their management of the collaboration. Fourth, an ontology, domain independent features and a process that can be applied to current e-learning platforms make the approach transferable and reusable. Fifth, several open research issues of particular interest were identified. We intend to address these open issues through research in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]