2.1 Partnerships to act and transform
As explained earlier, although partnership involves collaboration, it involves more structure and better-defined roles and responsibilities. Collaboration is a skill, which may come naturally to some, but which others need to be helped to learn. It is a vital part of partnerships hence part of using partnerships as a pedagogy will be facilitating ways for learners to understand the power of collaborative working.
As partnership is defined as a structure to meet goals, it offers a frame for building an understanding of concepts important to resolving an issue, but it also offers access to multiple different views of what constitutes resolution, which often results in a shifting of views. This way of working also allows learners to see and appreciate how ideas and realities are connected worldwide. Such ways of working are vital in living sustainably where compassion and change are required along with building an understanding of someone’s place and power in the world, and their effect on others and the environment.
Partnership working is seen by UNESCO (2023) as a transformative aspect of education for sustainable development (ESD) as the partnerships act as a bridge between learning and action and facilitate a ‘shift—from learning how to understand to learning how to act and transform’ (Schnitzler, 2019, p. 243).
Reflection
Think of partnerships that you know about.
Why do we form partnerships?
Write down three (or more) reasons why you would partner with someone else. Think of partnerships from both an educator’s point of view and from the learner’s point of view.
What could be the purpose of a possible partnership(s)?
In the case of the existing partnerships you have identified, how are the roles and responsibilities set out? In the case of the newly imagined partnership(s), how would roles and responsibilities be set up optimally?
2 Partnership as a pedagogy