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Social partnerships are local networks connecting some combinations
of local community groups, education and training providers,
industry, and governments for the purpose of working on local issues
and community-building activities. They are becoming an increasingly
widespread organisational form and are considered to work well
in expressing and responding to local needs and building decision-making
capacity at the local level.
- Through studies of ten social partnerships
involving vocational
education and training (VET) in Queensland and Victoria, this research demonstrates that social
partnerships are established and maintained because participants engage
in ‘partnership work’—the
interactive and collaborative process of working together
to identify, negotiate and define goals, and to develop processes
for realising and reviewing those goals.
- A key finding is that this is complex work, demanding significant
skills in cross-cultural and interpersonal
communication. Although this issue was identified in earlier
research, this study has enabled these complex activities to be further examined
and defined.
- Partnership work is underpinned by a set of principles that
vary for different types of work at different stages of the partnership.
The principles include developing or maintaining: the partnership;
shared goals; relations with partners; capacity for partnership
work; governance and leadership; and trust and trustworthiness.
- Given that vocational education provision is often supported
by social partnerships, as reflected in many of
the partnerships canvassed in this study, the nature of partnership
work is of interest and relevance to vocational
education and training, and particularly in relation to achieving objective
3 of the National Strategy for VET 2004–2010,
which is concerned with strengthening communities
and regions economically and socially through learning
and employment.
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