NN39, October 2007
Best Practice in Education and Training: Hype or Hope?
Is There A Best Practice In Education Research Collaboration?
By Kenneth King, University of Edinburgh/Norrag
As several other writers in this issue of NN39 have said, there has been a great deal written and practiced over the years about the area of education research collaboration. This has been particularly by bilateral bodies such as IDRC, NUFFIC and SAREC, foundations like Ford and Rockefeller, but also many, many others which have been mandated to fund research collaboration. Such partnership need not mean only north-south collaboration; it could also mean south-south, in an network of research centres within a region, or it could mean cross-regional collaboration, as in a recent initiative funded by the Japanese between Africa and Asia.Are there any propositions that are worth considering in what is often a complex project of cross-national collaboration? Here are some.
Symmetrical research collaboration is the ideal, between partners who have known each other and respect each other?s work. It is difficult enough to organise this within a single institution let alone across 3000 miles, but there are many good examples. The key issue is the right chemistry, and similar approaches to timing, deadlines and productivity! Not to mention theory and discourse.
The crucial design phase of the research needs adequate time, for both partners to be in the same place. Collaboration on design is virtually impossible by email.
Symmetrical research work can be difficult when the funding is all on one side of the partnership.
Many donor agencies don't wish to fund symmetrical collaboration, since their mandate is to build capacity in the south. This means that the northern partners have to be seen as the source of more expertise than the southern.
The old stereotype that research is designed in the north, data is collected by southern collaborators, but the analysis and publication take place in the north, is hopefully no longer in place.
But dramatic changes in institutions in the north and the south may mean that the ideal of long-term research collaboration over 3-4 years, with a whole series of different published outputs, is being exchanged for something closer to a consultancy relationship with each ?deliverable? costed in advance.
The dramatic reduction in the value of university salaries in many developing countries has led to the rise of the consultancy culture over the last 20 and more years. Research collaboration between short ?term consultants in the south and researchers on regular long-term, or permanent university contracts in the north can be problematic in terms of symmetry.
Where there are multiple northern and southern partners in a research collaboration, it is not uncommon for the northern partners to visit all the southern countries to advise and consult, even if their expertise is limited to one; while it is uncommon for the southern partners to visit all the southern partners, let alone all the northern.
Now that the southern partners, in some agency models, are expected to take the initiative in leading the partnership, and also have to feel an ownership of the process, this may not sit easily with the continued claim that there has to be capacity building for southern partners.
Given that the northern partners? original research expertise is often in particular countries of the south, what should be their role in carrying out fieldwork themselves, jointly with their southern colleagues. If they don't do this, what is the role of the northern partners? Management and capacity building??
Even if the partnership?s fieldwork data is held in common, in a situation where the southern partners are in the consultancy culture and the north on regular university contracts, there will be more time for data analysis, interpretation, reflection and publication on the northern side of the partnership.
In multiple partner research collaborations, one of the greatest dangers is that proportionately so much more time can sometimes be spent on planning, budgeting, scheduling and coordinating the diaries of all the different partners than if it were a two or three partner collaboration.
Moral: small can still be beautiful!
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