Supporting School-Led Improvements: Developing Messy Partnership Configurations to Exploit and Explore Networked Learning in Singapore

• In Event: Developing Authentic Research Practice Partnerships (RPPs) for Educational Change: Perspectives on Principles, and Practices From Four Diverse Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
This paper critically examines the complex interplay between centralised/de-centralised governance mechanisms and infrastructures for educational improvements across a small national system, and networked learning configurations that can facilitate or challenge system improvements.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
The paper draws on Douglas’s Cultural Theory (1992,1996) and Learning Sciences’ theories on infrastructuring (Penuel,2019; Bielaczyc,2006). Furthermore, recent work into Research-Practice Partnerships have begun to shift attention away from educational infrastructures that are developed to support partnership processes, towards infrastructuring (i.e.,how practices shape infrastructures). Infrastructuring takes on a relational and praxeological perspective on infrastructures as cooperative activities and socio-cultural-technological-political arrangements that create “conditions that support educators in making innovations into working infrastructures for organizing learning activities” (Penuel, 2019, p.660).

Data Sources & Methods
Singapore’s two decades of education research funding to improve schools and classroom practices have resulted in a rich database of findings on what works for educational improvement and under what contexts.

Case study methodology along with interviews with key actors in the cases, and document analysis are used to critically examine and map them to the theoretical frameworks of Cultural Theory and infrastructuring. 3 case studies of funded research studies are presented along with analysis of the governance structures that aim to exploit system resources or explore networked learning configurations for sustainable system improvements. The first is a large-scale longitudinal classroom-based study into teaching and learning in Singapore schools, with a hierarchical partnership model driven by top-down needs from the centralised government. The second is a self-sustaining Research-Practice Partnership that thrives through bottom-up school needs. The third draws on different partnership processes to spread school innovations.

Findings and Conclusions
We argue that the cases align to the Cultural Theory’s dimensions, and can shed light on how social-cultural-technological-political configurations, such as networked learning and governance structures, may generate different, often messy, partnerships between schools and researchers. This goes against the Singapore government’s equity imperative to provision all schools equally with educational innovations as a system resource – either all schools should benefit from the exploitation of such an innovation, or none at all. Using March’s (1991) distinction of exploitation and exploration, system innovation in a small state with limited resources tend to prioritise exploitation processes rather than open opportunities for exploration of innovations that can diffuse through schools more organically. We discuss how the researchers engage in infrastructuring processes with policymakers to exploit partnerships with unequal power consequences, or with schools to explore, messy, contingent partnerships that are potentially sustainable under certain conditions. Implications are made on how small systems with national priorities for school improvement efforts have to be ambidextrous in managing exploitation and exploration mechanisms to generate a self-sustaining innovation ecology.

Significance of the Study
The study will highlight how small systems can encourage broader networked learning partnership approaches that can lead to wider improvements at the within-, across- and beyond-school levels. Importantly, the study seeks to demonstrate how such partnerships can become “collaborative efforts […] to humanize and democratize the field of education research” (Penuel et al,2020,p.663)

Authors

• Dennis Kwek, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University

• Hwei Ming Wong, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University