The Influence of Policy Inducements and Embedded Relations on the Formation and Operations of Partnerships

Authors: Gordon Kingsley, Michael Waschak, Olga Sosinska

This study compares and contrasts two bodies of data. The first body of data comes from a "policy delphi panel" of 32 experts STEM and school-university partnerships developed to gain a better understanding on partnerships as an inter-organizational form part of a larger project on STEM education partnerships. A policy Delphi is different from standard Delphi panels in that the goal is to identify the parameters of an issue, the range of models that might be usefully applied to an issue, and the range of stakeholder interests that are likely to drive decisions. This panel of experts was reflecting upon best professional practices associated with developing and evaluating partnerships.

The second body of data comes from a set of six case studies examining partnerships created through the Systemic Initiative program (SI) and the Math Science Partnership program (MSP) both sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The SI program was intended to bring together community actors with schools to address the systemic needs of math and science education. The MSP program was developed in response to the No Child Left Behind Act and links teachers and administrators in k-12 school districts and math and science faculty from institutions of higher education (IHE) who have agreed to work in partnership. Each case traces the life cycle of each grant and the influence of the inter-organizational relationships on outcomes. Each case presents data from the administrative and operating networks associated with the partnership. In this body of data respondents were reflecting on a specific case of partnership rather than the body of professional practice.

A typology is developed that clusters responses according to the range and type of outcomes reported by respondents. Responses were classified according to the degree to which programmatic outcomes were achieved. Programmatic outcomes describe the types of marginal improvements in the work of participants and their organizations. Programmatic outcomes imply a gain in the performance or quality of a given activity but a continuity of the normal activities carried out by the participating professionals and their organizations. Responses were also classified according to the degree to which transformative outcomes were achieved. Transformational outcomes are changes in the ways in which managers and their organizations act in the pursuit of STEM education.

This typology was developed for both bodies of data. In doing so, we examine the differences in transformational claims made by respondents as their distance from the phenomenon increases. Table 1 provides a mock up of the typology with the distribution of the cases and respondents from the two bodies of data.

		Transformational Outcomes Low High
Programmatic Outcomes	Low	Cell 1: 5 Delphi Respondents 1 Case Study*	Cell 3: 12 Delphi Respondents 2 Case Studies
	High	Cell 2: 5 Delphi Respondents 1 Case Studies	Cell 4: 10 Delphi Respondents 2 Case Studies

* Distribution of the case studies is tentative as we are completing our analysis of this work.