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BackgroundNetworks play an important role in today’s societies. As a consequence, changes are apparent in the political, economic, cultural, educational and social agendas. PurposeThe main goal of this article is to map the situation of school networks in Spain. The research questions are focused on what forms collaboration and networking take in the Spanish education system; how policy and practice are providing a framework for the development of networks; and what the main barriers to fostering school-to-school collaboration in this context are. MethodsA mix of case studies and documentary analysis was used. Two regions located in the Southwest (Extremadura and the Canary Islands) were selected to examine their legislation about networks in education. The following aspects were considered: aims and aspirations, areas of interest, organisational structure, benefits and incentives, network project and evaluation and improvement proposals. In this way, Spain is presented as an example of a country that is exploring the possibilities offered by networks. Findings and conclusionsThere is no common state policy to support networking between schools. Rather, every local educational authority acts with different purposes and a variable extent of development. This particular situation offers a diverse map of education networks. The case studies show that networks are being developed bottom-up, through topics of interest, such as library, ecology, health-promotion, equality, emotional intelligence, educational research, enterprise and physical education. The paper concludes by reflecting on and discussing the current landscape of educational networks. Some barriers identified are related to: the networks’ structures that could be more inclusive, the loose culture of collaboration, the weak mechanisms to link social and professional capital provided by policy-makers, the importance of belief in the network society and community power by stakeholders and also to the necessity to increase incentives for people involved, in terms of working-time conditions and resources. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires leaders to navigate different fields and work across public, private, and plural sectors. Higher education (HE) is positioned uniquely to bring disciplines together and convene leaders from business, government, and civil society by designing customized learning encounters. Here we explore the creation and delivery of a change program for leaders concerned with the SDGs based on a framework for understanding and shifting underlying relationships – termed here, agreement structures. Informed by meta-analysis of cases integrating social and technical innovations, an immersive personalized sustainability learning program was designed and offered in a university setting in summer 2019 in Spain. Drawing from academia (students and faculty), business and local government, learning experiences were co-created to help shift the paradigm for creating change among people, place, and planet. Making explicit agreement structures influenced learning design and enabled the co-creation of a customized cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral program for leaders concerned with fulfilment of the SDGs. Exploiting the unique convening and integrating power of HE, the SDGs provided a shared narrative around which the faculty could communicate and bring their unique perspectives to co-create the program. Focused on accelerating multi-actor partnerships for delivery of the SDGs, the program focused on enabling a shift in underlying agreement structures necessary for local-global collaboration and transformation. The study describes a program that made conscious the relationships that need shifting to fulfil the SDGs and offers new insights to leverage the convening power of HE to contribute towards fulfilment of the SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This article engages with the tradition of educational transitions research, particularly with its attempt to evaluate the effect of exogenous variables on educational attainment. The study revisits a number of hypotheses that have attempted to explain the changing patterns of such effects throughout students’ educational career, particularly: life course hypothesis, selective attrition, maximally maintained inequality, effectively maintained inequality and path dependence hypothesis. Purpose: The article aims at examining the extent to which individual level variables influence the transition patterns that Catalan students follow, in the frame of the Spanish education system, from the completion of compulsory education up to the transition to higher education. Furthermore, the study evaluates the effects of an exogenous independent variable that educational transition’ studies have tended to neglect, that is, school composition. Particular emphasis is placed on observing the scope of changes in variables’ effects across transitions. Sample: Analyses are carried out on the responses to a questionnaire given by a sample of students in the final grade of lower-secondary education (age 16), upper-secondary academic (Baccalaureate) (age 18), middle vocational (age 17/18) and higher vocational education (age 20 and above). The selection of schools was made through cluster sampling based on the following five strata: public lower-secondary education (1580 students), private lower-secondary education (1373 students), Baccalaureate (964 students), Middle Vocational Courses (566 students) and Higher Vocational Courses (377 students). In each of these five strata, a random selection was made from the secondary schools that offer the educational stage in question. In total, 4860 students were surveyed in 56 different schools. Design and methods: In each of the schools included in the sample, questionnaires were distributed to all students in the last year of the various educational stages that the schools offer. The statistical analyses carried out rely on multinomial hierarchical logit models. The dependent variables relate to the transition options students follow when completing each of the educational stages under consideration. These data were devised by fusing students’ transition decisions taken at the end of the last year of each stage and the data provided by the schools after the end of the year regarding the results obtained by each student. The independent dummy variables used in the models are: gender, student educational capital, student immigrant background, parental professional category; prior grade point average (individual level variables); school type; school educational composition; school immigrant background composition; school professional composition (school level variables). Results: Whereas school level variables, as well as individual variables such as parental professional category or student immigrant background, are only significant on conditioning transitions at the end of lower-secondary education (compulsory), other variables such as gender or educational capital maintain their explanatory capacity on transitions across post-compulsory stages. In addition, the multinomial transition perspective utilised here allows us to evaluate the scope of significant path dependent effects. Conclusions: The study concludes that a clear pattern of ‘waning effects’ of exogenous variables does not occur throughout students’ educational career. That is, the effect of individual characteristics on the probability of students transitioning across consecutive educational stages does not systematically decrease as they progress in their educational career. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]