Getting Learning Partnerships right – the building blocks
Service Improvement Specialist | @keira_lowther
In our last blog, we looked at the motivations behind Learning Partnerships. In this one we examine some of the conditions we think are necessary for success – building on our experience, and that of colleagues at Renaisi, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. In particular, we look at taking time to set the project up, developing consensus about aims, and being explicit about creating the conditions for learning to happen and be acted upon.
There are several key decisions that we think those commissioning Learning Partners should consider, without which it is difficult to gain consensus or traction, and successfully work together in a Learning Partner project.
Starting with discovery
‘Learning Partners’ are commissioned for a variety of reasons, which can mean intentions and expectations for a specific project are not always obvious. Because of this, a period of ‘discovery’ at the start is essential. This is an opportunity for a Learning Partner to ask questions about the audience and desired impact of the learning. It’s also a time to assess the scope of the project and any areas where commissioners might lack conceptual clarity or shared understanding. This is particularly likely where the project is complex – extending over years, covering multiple partners or workstreams, where partners have different aims or where some partners have more power than others. The length of the discovery and assessment phase should reflect these complexities.
We find that this phase is not just about ‘set-up’ or relationship-building: feedback reveals that learning begins at this point. Commissioners benefit in terms of a deeper understanding of their aims and goals, and this clarity allows for better assessment of the project’s success throughout.
Whose learning is the priority?
Finding out whose learning is the priority is an essential part of the Discovery phase, and as we touched on in the first blog, it’s often surprisingly unclear. Are the Learning Partners required to focus on informing the practice of the funders of the work, their grantees or the people who stand to benefit from the work of the grantee? Or is it perhaps the wider sector, including future funders and potential delivery organisations?
The answers to these questions help determine where energy should be focussed, and some of the activities that will be needed. After this, attention turns to agreeing on the research questions, and this can require the commissioner to make some hard choices about priorities. This can surface tensions, especially in multi-partner projects (whose priorities win?). But identifying these early on can also support learning and enable more open and fruitful conversations.
‘Learning for’ or ‘learning with’?
We also need to explore whether the Learning Partner should identify and present learning points to the primary audience, which we have termed “learning for”, or support the commissioner/grantee to identify their own learning, which is “learning with”.
“Learning for” often requires data skills: analysing and collating learning from across funding streams or feeding analysis of a programme back into a team that doesn’t have its own, or spare, analysis capacity. “Learning with” requires a different set of skill: facilitation, reflective practice, and supportive challenge. It can feel like having a highly-skilled (and opinionated) ‘critical friend’.
How much resource extends into knowledge mobilisation?
What does good impact look like in a Learning Partnership? The results of a Learning Partner’s work are often found in ‘Insights Brief’-type reports, which can be readily shared. They’re designed to be engaging and easy-to-read to increase the chance they will inform future work. However, given the limited success of sharing information as a strategy for behaviour change, there remains some scepticism about the potential impact of this.
For a more active approach, both sides of a Learning Partnership need to put time and resource into deciding, and then supporting, how the learning should change the practice of its intended audience. This decision may mean taking time and resource away from the often more tangible-feeling data collection, analysis, and reporting. Is it justified to learn less if what you do with it is more impactful?
Have we gained ‘permission’ and consent?
As well as time and resource, it takes ‘permission’ for a Learning Partner to support change. By this we mean the permission given to the Learning Partner to name the implications of their findings by their intended audiences. This may happen in published reports, but more likely and usefully in workshops and discussions. We think that discussing this early on is essential – without permission to raise issues with honesty and sometimes challenge, the commissioners are not likely to be open and receptive when it happens, and the potential for learning is curtailed.
The commissioner can consider where the boundaries for challenge are – what areas of their work do they expect to be informed by this Learning Partnership? What will they do to ensure that the Learning Partner is able to share what has been learnt, respectfully challenging the commissioner at times? What does the commissioner need to feel comfortable receiving this?
As we’ve seen, sometimes the commissioner is not the (only) intended audience (for example, where they have contracted a Learning Partner to work with grantees). Our experience is that the Learning Partner must seek and negotiate permission with that audience too.
Grantees need to give permission and actively consent to the Learning Partner asking questions and exploring what might not be working, before they are likely to engage with this work, and feel comfortable receiving and using the learning to its fullest potential. This is difficult – but valuable - because of the exposure it will bring, perhaps in full view of a powerful funding body, and the extra time it may take to fit this in alongside their other work.
Is there adequate courage and comfort?
Once permission is given, conversations about what might not be working as planned can begin and improvements and progress can start. Although not always. We have found that comfort with learning uncomfortable things is often closely associated with the precarity of funding. People whose funding and future are not secure are far less likely to be open to hearing that things are not going according to plan, and feel safe discussing this openly.
In our examination of this type of work we have often wondered whether Learning Partner ‘seeds’ (for example, a focus on improvement, collaboration, sharing learning moments and bringing together multiple viewpoints) are being sown in evaluation ‘soil’ (for example, a focus on proving or disproving whether something works, providing accountability towards funders, and achieving objective judgments). Our sector is very used to working with evaluation soil. Switching from this when necessary is challenging but as a commissioner being conscious and explicit that you are trying to make a switch, and why, is the first step.
Conclusions
There isn’t a fool-proof recipe for effective and satisfying Learning Partnerships - perhaps because the contexts in which they are commissioned are so diverse. We do however see themes which we have tried to present here: taking time to dig beneath the surface to understand and respond to the context in which learning will be generated, and making explicit what it will take to receive and use the learning. These are two important steps in preventing Learning Partnerships from missing their mark.
In our third and final blog, we consider the three main roles we see within Learning Partners and how they show up under different contexts and in response to differing needs.