Trust and shared values: the basis of a sustained educational partnership?

The paper reports on the findings of a study into partnership working in the field of post-compulsory education in England. Drawing on a qualitative case study of a sub-regional partnership of providers of education and training the discussion focuses on the role of trust and shared norms and values in sustaining a partnership. Trust, norms and values are recognised as key dimensions of social capital, a concept that has attracted much research and policy interest in recent years but has not been applied to the analysis of partnership working. The study reported in this paper tracked the lifecourse of a partnership over five years and used multiple methods of data collection to gain deep and rich insights into the process of partnership working. Data were collected through observation of partnership meetings, analysis of documents produced by member organisations and individuals and semi-structured interviews with members of the formal Partnership Board. The interviewees were all senior managers of educational institutions or training organisations, including college principals, directors and chief executives with substantial experience of working in different inter-organisational and multi-agency partnerships in education. During the fieldwork I developed trust-based relationships with the members of the partnership and experienced the transition from non-participant observer and outsider to participant observer and more of an insider, which gave me the opportunity to probe more deeply into the basis of partnership working. The study revealed a range of motivations for engaging in partnership, including national policy imperatives promoting the concept and practice of partnership, but the most significant aspect uncovered by the grounded approach was the role of social capital, in the form of trust-based networks and shared norms and values in sustaining partnership. In this paper, I focus on the data in relation to trust and shared values. Other findings, in particular the role of social networks in supporting and sustaining partnership will be reported in a different paper.