Social partnerships in learning research seeks to understand the ways different systems operate when they intersect. These connections include pathways between learning and workforce systems.  The transitions to work and learning research explores the learning associated with engaging disenfranchised people in employment, community engagement and personal development. Research undertaken contributes to identifying key factors in determining and ensuring high quality training delivery in urban, regional and remote sites and considers issues related to educational policy, institutions, professional development, pedagogy, resources and individual engagement.

This theme explores the questions, issues, challenges and opportunities for developing, implementing, operating and sustaining an integrated tertiary education sector in diverse educational contexts. Although there has been for some time, an emphasis on improving pathways for students wanting to make the transition from vocational to higher education, it is not universal that VET necessarily offers the appropriate educational ladder of opportunity, particularly for those individuals from low socio-economic status, Indigenous and other equity groups.

Through innovative research this theme articulates the perspectives and actions of students, staff, institutions and employers and, identifies, applies, evaluates and promotes best practice approaches. The research explores ways to understand and address the keys to active transition between the worlds of work and learning in remote, rural and urban settings. It also explores the application of systemic use of multimedia technologies to support learning across diverse languages, contexts and purposes. We are also interested in developing approaches to supporting micro-enterprise and workforce development through understanding the ways people view and value learning and work in their own communities and the wider workforce to achieve socially, culturally and economically sustainable livelihoods. These approaches are relevant locally and on a broader scale and support programs in other discipline areas.

Social partnerships in lifelong learning require careful intercultural collaborations. We bring to our work long experience of collaborative work in diverse cultural settings, particularly in Indigenous and international contexts.

Of critical importance to our work are methodologies which take seriously, divergent knowledge practices.  We are actively sought to undertake complex cross-cultural research, consultancies and evaluations which require robust and rigorous outcomes committed to the mutual benefit of all partners.

The development and articulation of our methodologies requires significant epistemological work which is a key aspect of our research.  We work with Indigenous academics to articulate distinctive Indigenous methodologies, and to professionalise Indigenous researchers and consultants. We are interested in questions of evidence and accountability, ethics and agreement making. We are interested in the uses of websites and other digital technologies to preserve the complexity of the issues and practices we work within, and make our processes and outcomes accessible to the people we work with from diverse cultural and educational backgrounds.

The collaborations which our research enhances, allow us to focus on front-line policy work, and organisational culture.  We work with people on the ground in urban and remote communities and across all levels of government to identify and support those local practices which are successful and productive, but often invisible from above.  We work at the local level to support vibrant practices, and through those piecemeal tactics produce knowledge and policy at the same time. Devising an evidence base is knowledge work that is not separate from policy work.  We call this bottom-up or generative policy work. More on Transdisciplinary and Indigenous Methodologies.

The processes and nature of teaching and learning are undergoing significant change in schools (K-12), colleges (VET and adult education) and universities.  This change is occurring across the broad spectrum of education represented across lifelong learning.  People learn in various contexts, both formal and non-formal, for work and living. Education and training must be both responsive to the changing needs of people, the changes occurring across society and be a catalyst of change of society and individuals. New technologies, diverse learning settings and the globalisation of knowledge and media are a ubiquitous backdrop to these developments. Teaching as a profession is being reshaped by often contradictory and paradoxical trends that need exploration

This theme is focused on employment, community development and engagement, and personal development. The research undertaken contributes to identifying key factors in determining and ensuring high quality education and training in urban, regional and remote communities within the Northern Territory and beyond.

Research undertaken focuses on:

• The nature and context of contemporary schooling and the nature of teaching as professional work.
• International and national trends in schooling, teaching and learning
• Understanding the relationships that exist formally and informally through a range of socially informed learning partnerships,
• The nexus between teaching and learning and their interrelationship with work and culture, personal and community development,
• Their impact on the engagement, experience and outcomes of individuals, agencies and broader systems,   and
• The nature, role and benefit of ICT in education and training for improved people’s lives particularly those experiencing disadvantage and barriers.
  

Research in this theme potentially involves learning across all ages, formal as well as non-formal, institutional and non-institutional, and vocational and non-vocational. The central focus of this theme is a more equitable and just education experience for a better society and life for students, teachers and the community.

The internationalisation of education which sees transnational education initiatives operating with a global market as a tradeable commodity. This internationalisation of education has implications for national systems as the nature of character of education provisions is influenced by global  trends and transnational developments.

Increasingly education systems are conceptualised, constructed, evaluated and appraised in international terms  and this  has influenced the nature and character of schooling, training and learning worldwide. The transnational dimensions of education and training have also seen a growth in the global mobility of students, teachers and knowledge products as education, migration and employment opportunities become increasingly clustered as an interlinked phenomena. This mobility is fuelled by the differentiated nature of globalisation and the inequalities between the rich North and the poorer South. Many of these inequalities are exacerbated by civil war, climate change , natural disaster and economic and social hierarchies and education and training has an important role in promoting poverty alleviation and local capacity building. Many of these developments mean that global events and local impacts are interconnected in a way which spans regions in a manner which is without precedent and is facilitated by the new technologies of communication.

This research theme influences the other research themes in SPiLL and responds to the unique geographic location of CDU close to the Asian Pacific which is both fastest and most dynamic growing region and has the most profound and dynamic social, economic and cultural changes.