International Partnerships: Key Challenges, Tensions, and Possibilities

• In Event: The politics of knowledge production in international partnerships: Ethical dilemmas in North-South research

Abstract

Those who have engaged in research that brings together scholars and practitioners from multiple countries are well aware of the obstacles and tensions that frequently emerge as myriad differences in access to resources, demands on faculty time, and discursive conventions become apparent. At the same time, international collaborations can also be immensely satisfying for the participants as they realize that their collective knowledge is far greater than the sum of its parts. In this paper, we reflect on the process of international collaboration as members of a research team that included partners from several different countries at different points in their academic careers. Together, we worked on a project on how teachers in Tanzanian secondary schools took up professional development in learner-centered pedagogy. To develop this paper, we sent eleven open-ended questions via email to the researchers and asked them to share their analyses of the research collaboration. In this paper, we first draw on the sociology of social research to frame the endeavor. We then give a brief overview of our particular research project before describing the significant benefits of our international collaboration and the major obstacles the team confronted. Finally, the paper offers recommendations based upon the lessons learned from this experience for other researchers considering or engaged in international collaborative studies as well as for teachers and students who want to work or study internationally.

Authors

• Lesley Bartlett, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Allen Rugambwa, Mwenge University College of Education