TransferForce – A Qualification Series for Research-Practice Partnerships

Project Description

Research-practice partnerships are internationally regarded as the most effective instrument for bringing research and school practice into lasting dialogue. But how do researchers acquire the competencies such collaboration requires? And how can transfer work be designed so that it has an impact beyond a single site? Early career researchers in Germany receive excellent methodological training, yet the academic qualification system has so far done little to prepare them for facilitating a dialogue on equal footing with schools and educational administration. This is precisely where TransferForce comes in.

The three-year, nationwide event series is designed as a dual qualification programme: it interweaves theoretical input with hands-on application in the field. Five on-site events at DIPF in Frankfurt and six interactive online sessions with international experts as well as speakers from school administration and practice convey the foundations of partnership structures, co-construction and dialogic knowledge mobilisation.

In parallel, participants work throughout the entire project period in local transfer workshops together with their established practice partners at schools. There, researchers and teachers jointly develop concrete transfer products. All workshops address the shared core topic "dealing with student heterogeneity" so that an intensive exchange between the sites can emerge. An interdisciplinary mentoring board comprising representatives from educational administration, school practice and academia accompanies the workshops continuously and advises them on the quality, practicability and system relevance of their products.

In total, the programme brings together around 90 participants across three levels of intensity – from committed workshop participation and an advisory observer role through to flexible attendance at individual online sessions. An accompanying evaluation examines the quality and impact of the programme at the activity, outcome and impact levels. The materials and transfer products developed are made permanently available as Open Educational Resources via DIPF's channels. TransferForce builds on the preliminary work of the PaTH and Peers4Practice projects at DIPF and contributes to the BMBFSFJ framework programme "Together for Better Education".

Project Objectives

TransferForce pursues four interlocking objectives: early career researchers are to be systematically qualified for brokering and facilitation tasks at the interface of educational research and school practice (knowledge brokering). The transfer workshops generate evidence-based and practicable solutions that are geared towards their potential for system-wide scaling from the outset. Local partnership initiatives in Germany, which have so far operated in isolation from one another, are brought together into a lasting, nationwide network. Finally, participants are to carry a bi-directional understanding of transfer back into their own institutions, thereby laying the foundation for a long-term community of practice.

Overall, the project aims to anchor the dialogue between research and practice sustainably within the education system and to strengthen bottom-up innovation as a complement to broad top-down reforms.

Funding

Funded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth within the framework programme for empirical educational research "Together for Better Education".

Project Management

Project Team

Project Details